


The Dead in the Abbey

by Reynier



Category: Arthurian Literature - Fandom, Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Characters died before the fic starts but like its all the deaths we know about lol, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Murder Mystery, Post-Camlann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25430983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier
Summary: Lancelot knows to stay away from the other survivors of Camlann. They don't want to talk to him. So it's a surprise when he gets a letter from Guinevere asking him to make haste to her abbey for urgent business.
Relationships: Guinevere & Lancelot du Lac
Comments: 99
Kudos: 49
Collections: Arthurian_Server_Squad





	1. Two Years Later

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I'm gonna do it. A multichapter fic that isn't written with Lou. No external motivation. Just my own deadlines. I got this. Maybe. 
> 
> Cerise is the name we gave to Meleagant's sister from _Knight of the Cart_. Léline is an OC I stole from [my own fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24600904/chapters/60001702) and decided to reuse cause making up new names is hard lol

**Two months.**

“I don’t want to talk to you,” said Guinevere. Her black hair, usually dripping over her shoulders in tight braids, was carefully concealed by her wimple. Her dress was modest and severe.

Lancelot felt his mouth twitch involuntarily. After everything, this rejection was entirely expected and, despite that, more hurtful than any thus far. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come.”

“But you came anyway. Go away, Lancelot.” She gave him an acidic glance. “You never bring anything but ill in the end. Go darken someone else’s doorstep, won’t you? Mine has been haunted long enough.”

So he nodded, and he left. 

**Two years.**

The abbey stretched up into the grey sky, wood and bits of old Roman stone stuck together over the years until they formed a network of wings with a labyrinthine layout. Lancelot had avoided it like the plague. The half-finished roads of the faded Empire offered endless distractions for the whimsical wanderer: dead-ends, hidden woods, and bandits galore. He had tried his hardest not to think. He had, in true Lancelot fashion, failed. 

But the abbey at the end of the cobbled lane awoke in him a sense of foreboding that he had not felt in quite some time. Girding his nerves, he took a deep breath, gripped his walking stick tighter, and marched up to the front gate. When he rang the bell silence greeted him, followed by a concerning number of minutes before someone finally opened the door. She was short, with a warm face and the traces of smile-lines around her mouth. “Hello?” she said, peering out. “Are you the Bishop’s man?”

“Ah, no.” Lancelot tried for a smile. It felt stiff, but it was probably about the right expression. “I’m here to talk with the-- with the Prioress.”

Her hand flew to her mouth in pardon. “Oh! She’s occupied today. We are hosting a travelling monk, you see.”

“I can wait.”

“If you don’t mind. There are spare rooms in the East wing. That’s where we put up all sorts of dignitaries. You may come in, if you like.”

She propped the door open for him and he ducked his head to enter. It was a modern door, built into the thick wood of the gate itself, and when he emerged on the other side he blinked against the sudden darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the vaulting hall in which he now stood. Pillars propped up the walls and, high above him, a skylight lurked in the ceiling. It was the only light. 

“I’m Sister Léline,” said his greeter, closing the door. She regarded him curiously. “You were a knight.”

“I still am,” he said absentmindedly, “technically.” The lack of a hilt to clutch thrummed at his fingers, and he splayed them in the air. He felt Sister Léline’s eyes on him. It had been too long since he talked to another person. “You could call me Malfaisant.” One eyebrow raised incredulously. “Is that your name?” 

“No,” Lancelot admitted, “but a hermit yelled it at me last week and I thought I’d try it out.”

“Huh.” She gave a noncommittal humming noise and stepped further inside the hall. “Well, it is an honour to have you here, Sir Malfaisant. It’s not often we get visitors.” “You were expecting someone.” His footsteps echoed on the floor and sound cascaded around the pillars, too loud. “The Bishop’s man?”

Léline nodded and hurried forward to catch up with him. “We expect him tomorrow. I thought he might be early.”

“What is he coming for?”

For a second she looked as though she would respond, but then her eyes narrowed and she gave him a closer examination than she had at the door. “What are _you_ here for?”

Lancelot wished desperately that he had someone at his side who was good at talking, because he found himself a pauper in words, and lies most of all. He settled on repetition. “I’m here to talk to the Prioress.”

“You said that before.” “It’s all I know.” He patted his pocket and produced the rumpled letter he had received several days ago. “A hermit gave me this. It’s from her. Said to hurry as quickly as I could, she needs to see me.”

Léline let out a light laugh. “You meet a lot of hermits.”

“They keep an eye on me.”

The campanile rang suddenly and Lancelot flinched, unaccustomed to such loud noises. Darting one hand out, Léline gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “You get used to it,” she said. “Eventually. Come, I’ll get you something to drink. Just because we live modestly does not mean we expect our guests to starve.”

He followed her through the long hall in silence, listening to the ringing echoes of the campanile and the hollow places where birdsong should have been and wasn’t. It occurred to him as he walked that she had not answered his question. They were expecting an important visit, and the confluence of his summonings and this event could hardly be a coincidence. Well, they could have been a coincidence, but coincidences didn’t happen to Lancelot. Everything that happened to Lancelot was supposed to happen, although what mysterious force directed the charade of his life was unclear to him. It was possibly God-- _someone_ had thrown a fireball at him in the Wastelands, at any rate. He tried not to trouble himself about this. The fireball incident had been an outlier. Whatever unseen hand directed affairs so precisely had decided he should live; or, if today was the day that he should die, there was hardly anything he could do about it. Anyway, this event seemed too unusual for him to die. It would be anticlimactic. 

Finally they reached the end of the hall and Sister Léline led him through a covered arch into the inner courtyard. It was beautiful. Far more luxurious than he would have expected from an abbey, it boasted trestles and beds of multicoloured flowers, desaturated in the pale fog of the day but chillingly striking nonetheless. Lilacs arced up above him, mixing with the faint scent of wisteria. He breathed in deeply. 

“The Prioress organized all this,” said Léline, with a knowing look. “She said we all needed something to put our hands to. It’s pretty, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” He paused to examine a trailing arm of garden-roses, perfect and miniature. They emitted a pleasant smell, but it was a shadow of the fragrant wild roses that used to grow in Guinevere’s garden in Camelot. Perhaps there wasn’t enough sun here. 

Léline waited patiently for him with a faint expression of pride in the work to which she had contributed. When he stirred himself from the roses she turned back towards the path she was walking along, and said, “I don’t know how long you will have to wait. We cannot eat with you, but we can either serve you privately or you may eat with the serving-people. They are very friendly. But your honour is your own business.”

His honour, what was left of it, seemed to be everyone’s business all the time. A private meal would have been preferable, but he did not want to seem aloof, especially if this stay proved longer than a day or two. And besides, at the very least he had some fantastical stories he could recount in fits and starts. Talking was hard, but he was hardly stupid. People needed hope. No miraculous tales left the makeshift court of King Constantine, and most of the protagonists were dead anyway. He could do his part to make sure they weren’t forgotten. “I’m fine in the serving hall. I can help with the affairs of the abbey while I’m waiting for the Prioress.”

“You may be waiting a while, she’s very busy,” said Léline, leading him through a narrow arch on the other side of the courtyard. This part of the abbey was darker, less vaunting, more like the back alleys in Camelot than the grand main hall. Just as before, it was abandoned save for him and his erstwhile guide. “The man she’s talking with-- Garoc is his name. He’s a wanderer, but quite an esteemed political thinker. It’s an honour for him to stay with us. He’s travelling to the court of King Constantine, you know.”

“I didn’t,” said Lancelot. He had an overwhelming sense of having been pushed into a moat and finding that he had forgotten how to swim. Politics had not always been this exhaustingly incomprehensible, had they? He had aptly navigated the edged lanes of Camelot’s inner circles. He had understood things, or at least he thought he did. Certainly he must have done _something_ right, to wind up with the friends he had. But the language of power evaded him now. Garoc was talking with the Prioress. Garoc was going to King Constantine. These pieces of information were meaningful. What they meant, however, was absolutely beyond him, and he found he did not care very much. Politics could stay away from him. If they didn’t, he had a hefty stick and an immaculate knowledge of how to hide bodies. “Where is everyone?”

Léline made a turn down a small flight of steps and he followed. “Attending to the back gardens, mainly.” Noticing his amused silence, she gave a laugh. “We garden a lot. There’s not much else to do. Ah-- here we are. There may be more company here. Are you an honest type of man, Sir Malfaisant?”

Lancelot frowned. This seemed like a difficult question to answer honestly. Then the humour of that sentiment caught up with him, and he opted for a simple answer. “I’m not a liar, but I can keep my mouth shut if it’s nuns in the kitchen you’re talking about.”

“Nuns in the kitchen are common,” said Léline, grinning. She swung the door open, and suddenly a warm murmur trickled out in the hallway. Amusingly, it sounded more like an inn common room than anything else. That got him remembering the last inn he had visited. Several weeks ago, perhaps. He had sat by the wall and listened to the burble of conversation, completely unnoticed. The bartender hadn’t paid him a second glance, and the only disturbance of the night was when someone offered to buy his sword. That had been uncomfortable, because Lancelot had said “what sword?” and then had to pretend he was joking when the man pointed at the sheathed blade sitting on the seat next to him. It was events like these which made inn visits a rare treat.

He shook his mind clear of uncomfortable memories and followed Léline through the doorway. Inside, a thin room packed with tables and cupboards extended down a ways. Kitchen staff alternately bustled around the food-stacked counters or sat on the tables, talking with one another. Two nuns, the skirts of their habits rucked up around their knees, lounged on one end, chatting with a young boy in a page’s cap. 

Léline cleared her throat. “We have a visitor.”

The room stilled. One of the nuns, a brief look of panic crossing her face, frantically pulled her skirts down and crossed her ankles. Her friend scooted behind the page-boy as though she assumed Lancelot lacked comprehension of object permanence. Lancelot, for his part, gave a small wave and a grimace. 

“He’s fine,” said Léline dryly. 

The assembled watchers relaxed slightly. Across the room, the staff went back to their mingling and vague food preparation. The page-boy stepped to the side, thus betraying the nun who had hidden behind him. Léline pointed at her. “Thaïs,” she said. Then the other nun. “Aicha.”

Thaïs and Aicha gave him guarded nods. 

“I’m--” Lancelot stopped. “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Aicha.

“Please don’t report us,” said Thaïs piteously. “We won’t do it again.”

Léline raised an eyebrow at him. “They will.”

“We will,” agreed Aicha. “But still please don’t report us.”

“I don’t know anyone to report you to,” said Lancelot, taking a few cautious steps into the kitchen and backing up against the wall opposite them. “Well, except the Prioress, but--”

“Oh, no,” cut in Aicha, her face deadpan, “please don’t report us to the Prioress for stealing food and shirking our duties, that would be _terrible._ She would never forgive us.”

Thaïs nudged her. 

“I’m not going to say anything,” squeaked Lancelot. He had the head-under-water feeling again. Aicha and Thaïs appeared to be about twenty years younger than him and probably did not know how to use a sword or cut someone’s throat or do any of the definitely scary things Lancelot was experienced at doing, but nonetheless in the space of about a minute they had managed to substantially intimidate him. 

“He’s here to talk to the Prioress,” said Léline, his saving angel. She appeared to have realised that words were not his forte and taken pity on him. “I told him he could wait here until she was free.”

Raising her eyebrows, Aicha said, “That will be sometime next week. The holy Garoc is very injured in the lungs. He makes noises every time he breathes, and passes them off as words.”

_Oh_ , thought Lancelot, _a tiny Guinevere._ This would be amusing if nothing else. And if he didn’t start crying unexpectedly, which tended to happen quite a bit. But the two of them did not give him time to slip down the dangerous road of memories, too intent were they on performing their own two-person comedic pantomime. 

“In the guise of God, it is important that we tread the footsteps of the sacred.” Thaïs spread her hands and put on a garbled impression of an old man. “God loves us because we love God. We love God because God loves us. This is sacred. This is holy. Is there more wine?”

 _And there’s the other half of the set,_ thought Lancelot, with a pang of sadness. 

“I need to get back to the main hall,” said Léline, in a strangled tone of voice. Judging from the look on her face, Lancelot was not the only person who held Aicha and Thaïs in terrified awe. “In case other people show up unexpectedly. Goodbye. Be nice to him.”

She left. 

“You’ve got a nice face,” said Thaïs after a moment’s silent staring. “I like your hair.”

“I like his hair too,” said Aicha, nodding. 

Lancelot made some kind of a noise which was possibly a thank you and more probably a choked scream, but to his relief he stayed upright and did not start crying on the spot. He tried for reciprocity. “I like your hair too.”

“Oh, Aicha,” said Thaïs, turning her head slowly to her companion, her eyes wide, “no one has told him about wimples.”

Aicha pointed at the page boy, who was watching the proceedings with rapt enthusiasm. “Cover your ears, Lucien.”

Without waiting for him to oblige, Thaïs leaned forward towards Lancelot, who wished desperately there wasn’t a wall behind him. “When a woman loves God very much--” she began, leering, but at that instant the door next to him swung open once more. 

Relief running through his veins, Lancelot turned to behold his saviour. At that instant no God could question his faith in divine deliverance. 

“The Prioress is finished with her business,” said the sister in the door, scanning the room briefly. “She heard there was a man here to-- oh!”

“Ah,” said Lancelot, “hello.”

Cerise de Gorre took the Lord’s name in vain.

“You sin,” said Thaïs reprovingly, at the same time as Aicha, a look of quick calculation on her face, said, “Do you know him?”

“I…” Cerise said faintly. 

“Do you love him?” said Thaïs gleefully, jumping up from her table. 

“What? No!”

“No,” Lancelot said, shaking his head firmly. 

Cerise’s face, weathered and sun-kissed under her wimple, broke into a wide smile. “Come here,” she said, holding out her arms. “I can’t believe it. I-- I thought you were dead, to be honest.”

He let himself be pulled into a firm hug, breathing into the unusual sensation of someone else’s hands, comforting and strong, on his back, and studiously ignoring the jeering noises of the two junior nuns. “I didn’t know you were here,” he whispered to Cerise. “I thought you’d be back in Gorre.”

“My father died some time before-- before everything. So I left with the queen. A lot of us did. This abbey is half Camelot’s lost daughters.”

“Is he a _knight_?” Aicha exclaimed, overhearing this. 

The murmurs of the kitchen quieted. A dozen eyes turned towards Lancelot. 

“Oh, dear,” he mumbled. 

“Girls,” said Sister Cerise, straightening her shoulders and assuming a position of delicious authority, “this is Sir Lancelot du Lac.”

“You weren’t-- you weren’t supposed to tell them that,” said Lancelot sadly into the silence. 

Aicha gaped at him. “Lancelot du Lac? _Sir_ Lancelot du Lac? The one who killed Sir Gawain?”

“Yes,” said Lancelot, “that one.”

The page, ostensibly named Lucien, raised one hand politely. “Can you really breathe underwater?”

“Did you really give up your kingdom to your cousin?” called someone from the back of the room. 

“Is it true that you were raised by the Lady of the Lake?”

“Did you cross the Sword Bridge without magic?”

“Did you--”

More questions ensued, but Lancelot was not particularly of a mind to hear them. He gave an apologetic and hopefully amiable smile before jetting past Cerise and out the door that was still open behind her. Once outside, he braced a hand against the wall and took three deep breaths. The door clicked close and Cerise’s footsteps padded gently towards him. “I suppose it’s always like this,” she mused, running a hand along his shoulder. “I should have guessed. I’m sorry.”

“I had told the nun at the door to call me Malfaisant,” he said plaintively. 

“That’s a bit on the nose.”

“A hermit yelled it at me last week.”

“He was right, to be fair.”

Lancelot shrugged her hand off. “I know. That’s why I decided to give it a turn.”

“I’m so sorry, Lancelot,” she said, pity twisting her face. “But I’m glad you’re here. I should take you to the Prioress.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. It would not do to make it this far in proud austerity and then burst into tears at this juncture. So instead of talking, of asking how the last two years had treated her, he simply followed Cerise out of the back hallway and up a wide flight of stairs in the living quarters of the abbey. The twists and turns of the building eluded him. But finally they emerged on a high landing and paused outside a door. Cerise glanced at him nervously, then knocked. “Sir Lancelot is here, Prioress.”

A vague mutter of greeting came from within. Cerise turned the knob and held the door open for him. “Good luck,” she whispered. Then she closed it quietly behind him. 

The Prioress, her wimple crisp and perfect, her dress darker than the regulation, rose to greet him. “Thank you for coming,” she said. Her face was open but blank. “I didn’t think you would.”

He accepted the hand she offered in silence and gave it a light kiss. Her skin was painfully cold against his lips. 

“Yes, that’s all very well,” she said, turning away from him once that perfunctory courtesy was done. “I cleared out Garoc as soon as I heard you had arrived.”

He hummed. At least here was one person with whom he did not have to say pointless words.

Then she turned back towards him suddenly, her movements sharp and anxious. For the first time his eyes caught hers, as green as ever, widened in some unusual emotion. She let out a short breath from unpainted lips. “I need you here,” said Guinevere, “because yesterday someone in this abbey was killed. And I want you to find out who did it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please lemme know ur thots!!!!!!!


	2. The Prioress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for semi-graphic descriptions of a dead body, also blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joconde is the name we gave to the woman that Gawain rescues from the Devil in _L'Atre Périlleux._

Lancelot blinked. “Someone got killed? In your _abbey_?”

“No,” said Guinevere, her brows raising in pale mockery, “in my nice little cottage in Rheged. Yes, in my abbey, that is, the place which I am currently in, and have been in for the last two years. Ergo it is my problem.”

“Right. And I’m here because…”

Letting out a tense breath, Guinevere stepped away from him and turned towards the window on the other side of her small greeting room. The curtains were drawn and only a sliver of washed-out light snuck in through the gaps, casting one side of her face in unflattering light. Everyone said she had been a beautiful girl, and Lancelot could attest to her beauty as a woman from the first day he had met her to the last, a decade and a half later, but in the past two years her face had sharpened and thinned far more than seemed natural. She looked very, very tired. 

But her eyes were as quick as ever, and no outward transformation would alter her mind, which had helmed the kingdom of Logres from her juvenescence until her catastrophic dethroning. She ran one hand along the fabric of the curtain. “I think everyone here is very stupid,” she said. Then she shook her head. “No, that’s not fair, I think everyone here is very nice and not inclined to think much about murder. Someone, presumably, must be very not nice, because we are dealing with the current situation, but I can’t investigate who that is without seeming unhinged and hysterical.” She leant her head against the fabric-swathed window as though trying to absorb the outside light without exposing herself to it. “So I thought to myself: who do I know who is very intelligent, adept at being unobtrusive, completely impervious to all sorts of political machinery, and thinks about murder all the time?”

Lancelot hummed. He wished desperately to sit down in one of the ornate chairs to his side, but did not want to seem disrespectful. “I could have changed in two years,” he pointed out, and his voice sounded sullen even to his own ears.

“Oh, yes, I see your nice lack of a sword. How does the walking stick feel, by the way? Is it a nice weight to bash people’s skulls in, or do you want to go back to something a little sharper for really stinging head wounds?” Before he could even process the words, she waved a finger at him. “No, no-- don’t cry. You don’t get to cry about that. You get to swallow it and move on with the conversation about my murder problem, or you get to walk out that door and keep doing whatever you were doing when you got my missive.”

He hadn’t been about to cry. There was nothing she had said to him that he hadn’t thought himself, a million times over, and with more stinging adjectives. But he could take a hint. “I’m not sure unobtrusive is going to be a helpful angle here,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning back against the door frame in lieu of being offered a chair. “I mean, they all know I’m-- me.”

“No, they know you’re the grand Sir Lancelot, famed in tales from here to the lands of King Morien.” Guinevere strode over to one of the chairs and pulled it out for herself to sit down. “And while they’re all obsessing over Sir Lancelot and his miraculous stories, you’re being you, thinking about murder, and reporting to me.” She cracked a grin. “See? It will be just like old times.”

“Can I please sit down?”

“No.”

This was, in Guinevere-speak, a tacit yes. Lancelot pushed himself off of the wall and sat in the chair opposite her. “So who’s dead? And can I see the body?”

She took a sip from the half-empty chalice of wine on the table in front of her. “All things in due course. The body is undisturbed. I made up something about scripture and everyone was too horrified by a bit of blood to question me. The man in question was named Dorien-- he was the travelling companion of Garoc, with whom I was just speaking. I believe they met several days south of here, and were planning to stay together until Camelot. Unfortunately that will not be happening, because yesterday we found him dead at the foot of the stairs in the South Wing. He had fallen down them, clearly.”

“Clearly.”

“I sent for you immediately. Then, after a suitably long period of babbling about the tragedies of the universe, I sent word to the Bishop of Logres as well, because Garoc was making a stink about how suspicious it was and I didn’t want to tell him, oh, don’t worry, it will all be fine, there’s a fellow coming whom I once watched gouge out someone’s eyes for no reason at all, he’s very good at violence, I’m sure he’ll figure this out.” 

Thoughtlessly, she pushed the chalice towards him on the table and he took it on instinct. Then their eyes met, discomfort bubbling between them. Lancelot placed the chalice down again without having sipped from it and cleared his throat. “Alright. This makes sense, sort of. What now?”

“Now the body.” She stood, brushing imaginary lint from her dark grey skirt. “I’ve told them not to go near it save Sister Joconde, who’s been keeping an eye out. She’s the only one to whom I’ve told my suspicions.”

He held open the door for her absentmindedly. “Joconde? Not the same Joconde who--”

“Yes, yes, the same Joconde who used to live in a graveyard,” said Guinevere, forging out of the room and onto the landing without a backwards glance. “I figured she would be rather more prosaic about this sort of thing than some of the younger nuns. Come on, Lancelot, we don’t have all day and I know you can walk faster than that.”

_More people who used to know me_ , Lancelot thought, striding to catch up with her. _Perfect._ He had never known Joconde well, which almost made it worse. Vaguely, he could picture her-- brown hair, wore a lot of purple, yes, that was probably it. She had never been his friend, but she had been friendly, in the way that people had been friendly to him out of genuine kindness and not knowledge of who he was. She would probably not be kind to him now. Not with her affiliations. 

As they reached the open air of the garden, a broken-tail end of conversation tugged at his mind. “It wasn’t for no reason.”

“Hm?” said Guinevere, ploughing down the gravel path between the begonias and the primroses. 

“I didn’t gouge out that man’s eyes for no reason. We had told him not to tell anyone we were at the inn or I would gouge out his eyes. But he told people. So I gouged out his eyes.” 

This made a lot of sense to him, and for a moment he thought Guinevere would nod in acceptance, but then she raised an eyebrow and tossed a shrug in his direction. “Well, you can tell Garoc that yourself and I’m sure he’ll be positively charmed. It’s a fine sentiment. There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re a very good man and a model for the children, truly.”

“You had no problems with it at the time,” pointed out Lancelot. 

Guinevere did not deign to respond to this, instead taking the opportunity to snap off a nearby rose that had dared to look slightly droopier than its fellows. She tossed it at Lancelot over her shoulder and he only barely managed to catch it. It was a sad little rose, slightly browned on one petal, too small and with no fragrance at all. It made him very emotional. There was something terribly sad about this too-large abbey at the end of a too-long road, with its dead bodies and deader nuns. It was nearly April. This time three years ago he remembered sitting under a wide willow tree by the banks of the Severn, a game-board spread out before him. He hadn’t paid much attention to it, opting to watch Guinevere and-- 

\--it was one of those crystal-clear memories that stayed, preserved in ice, and replayed whenever you were hurting so you remembered how happy you used to be. The breeze had whistled through the trailing leaves of the willow and through his hair, ghosting over the bare skin of his hands and onto other people, leaving them laughing and tousled. He didn’t remember who had won the game. He didn’t remember what the game had been.

“Corpse,” said Guinevere, jolting him out of his stinging reverie. She was pointing at the floor. 

“Oh,” Lancelot noticed, “corpse.”

She pointed up and to her right. “Joconde.”

“Hello, Sir Lancelot,” said the woman standing on the other side of the corpse, whom he had not noticed because there was a corpse in front of her, which was far more interesting. Yes, he thought to himself, that was Joconde. He had been right about the purple, but it was gone now, replaced with the demure grey that soaked every corner of the abbey. She looked less icy than he might have expected, and even proffered a timid smile when he flicked his eyes in her direction.

“He means to say hello back,” Guinevere’s voice said dryly. Lancelot wasn’t looking at her. There was a puzzle to be solved here, a challenge to be overcome, and the fact that it was not the usual sort of Lancelot challenge made it all the more refreshing. Forgetting the two nuns standing on either side of him, he knelt down by the erstwhile form of Dorien. 

He lay at the bottom of a small flight of stairs that ran along one side of the small room in which they were standing. Lancelot had been too absorbed in recollections to take note of how exactly they had gotten here, but it was easy enough to guess its purpose. Sacks of grain clustered on one end, swathed in burlap. On the other, shelves were stacked high with preserved goods and bottles. Several barrels sat beneath the stone stairwell. The floor was swept clean of dust and grain, unstained save for the large pool of dried blood that spread out from the darkened skull of the body. A smaller stain jutted out some distance from the edge of it. 

Leaning closer to the body, Lancelot used the meat-knife at his hip to lift the man’s crusted bangs from off his face. Milky white eyes stared back at him. Above them, Dorien’s forehead was split by a nasty gash from his temple to his right cheekbone. Standing, Lancelot stepped back. “You’re right,” he said, “he was murdered.”

“I told you so,” said Guinevere to Joconde. “I do have an eye for this sort of thing.”

Joconde frowned at the two of them. “Is it the fact there’s no knife in the sheath at his hip? I don’t know how you both noticed that. I didn’t see it until the Mother Prioress pointed it out.”

Lancelot looked back down at the body. “Oh. That too. But also there’s a bloody footprint outside of the puddle of blood.”

Craning forward, they all stared at it. “Bastard,” breathed Guinevere, “I didn’t even see that.”

“I mean…” Lancelot gestured vaguely at the mark on the floor. It was half-formed, only the front of it emerging from the main puddle, but clearly a footprint. “If you’re going to kill someone in such a messy way, you don’t tramp through all the blood. It’s a foolish mistake. No one who knows what they’re doing would do that. I wouldn’t.”

“This is a lot to take in,” said Joconde faintly. “So someone-- I don’t-- what? What?”

Straightening and crossing her arms, Guinevere summarized. “Someone went to the trouble of pushing him down the stairs, making sure he was dead, and then stealing his knife, but also had no idea what they were doing.” She blinked and, in the same even tone of voice, said: “Sister Joconde, you are going to leave now.”

“Yes, Mother.” Joconde curtsied and bolted, clearly sensing something in the air that she did not want to breathe. 

When her footsteps had clattered sufficiently far down the exit hallway, Guinevere turned and caught Lancelot’s eyes. “I have a horrible suspicion and I want to know if you have the same horrible suspicion.”

It did not take much wit to know what she meant. “It was one of your people,” he said. “A nun or one of the staff.”

“Yes.” Lifting her skirts carefully off the floor, she stepped to the side of Dorien’s body and peered at the footprint. “It’s not a very large footprint. That exonerates me, I guess. In case you thought I’d arranged this rigamarole myself for the pleasures of your company.”

He huffed a breath of laughter. “Please. Like you would do it this poorly.”

“Thank you, I’m honoured. Well. This has been enlightening, and the things the light is showing are things I do not much like. I suppose we-- oh, damn.” This last was because the campanile had sounded again. Dropping her skirts and stepping back, Guinevere waved a hand in the air as though she could turn off the campanile at will. “I swear, it gets louder every day. They really don’t want me to sleep. Anyway, unfortunately I must attend to my dear little nuns like the proud mother I am. Do you think you can find your way back to the kitchen? You’ll find we don’t stand much on formality here; as long as you don’t let our esteemed guest see you eating with the serving-people no one will mind much.”

Lancelot minded very much if the questions they asked him were in the same vein as the ones they had posed in his earlier encounter, but to voice this seemed crass, as everything they asked him about was in fact something he had done and well deserved to be reminded of. Instead he gestured at the dead body. “Joconde is gone. Do you want me to do something with this before I go to eat? I mean-- you’re not going to keep it in the store room indefinitely, right?”

“I was planning to leave it here until next winter when we get peckish,” said Guinevere, “but since you offer so kindly I supposed you could tidy the place up a bit. Don’t put poor Dorien anywhere we can’t fish him out of for the burial. There should be a handy bit of burlap around here somewhere, I believe. That should do.”

He nodded and was already heading to the shelves to root around for a large enough sack when he saw her pause at the door and look back at him, her eyes wide and dark. “Thank you, Lancelot.” Then, without waiting for his response, she swept away. 

It was easy enough to hoist the corpse into one of the oversized grain bags and secure it with some hemp cord before propping the whole affair up on the far side of the stairs. Then he cast about for a pail of water and found one by the door where, presumably, some poor traumatized nun had brought it yesterday before succumbing to Guinevere’s nonsense citation of the scripture pertaining to people who had fallen down the stairs. As he scrubbed at the red-brown stains on the stones, he thought about the abbey. He had not been to many abbeys in his life, but the ones he had visited had been very different from this one. Everything here-- the pale garden, the incomprehensible hierarchy, the workers who talked to their betters with respect but no fear-- seemed like a cardboard puppet-show of what Camelot had been. And, at the end of it all, the politics, politics everywhere you looked, politics in the storage room and politics at the Prioress’ table and politics tripping down the stairs. Lancelot _hated_ politics. They never seemed to touch him, but his loved ones were granted no such reprieve. 

But at least, he thought, as he soaked up the last bit of brackish red water with his rag and rubbed his hands clean on it, there was nothing much for him to lose anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hellloooooo hope ur having a good day. if u have any Thots i would treasure them <3


	3. The Castle by the River

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lancelot tells a story.

“I remember you,” said the kitchen-woman, not looking up from the bread she was cutting. Her name was Portia, he knew. “From Camelot.”

Lancelot twisted his mouth and made a vague inquisitive noise. He had insisted on being fed last, because this was a nun-place and he was not a nun. This sort of prosaic ordinance went over far better with serving staff than nobles, he had come to find. 

Shoving the breadknife into a large wooden block with holes cut in for that purpose, Portia continued, “Do you remember Beaumains?” His breath caught. It had been a long time since he had heard that name— longer than just the two years which put a separation between him and everyone he had once known, because Beaumains was dead, Beaumains had been dead even before Gareth was. Beaumains had died the second Queen Morgause had walked into court, plucked Gareth out of thin air, and waved him in front of his brothers. “Yes,” he said shortly. 

“Hmm.” She piled the sliced bread onto a large platter and then pulled another knife out of the wooden block to cut the venison. _An Arthur of the kitchen_ , Lancelot thought whimsically. _Who, like Arthur, doesn’t know the power of her words._ “I worked at Camelot. We liked him. We liked you, too.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lancelot. He tilted his head to get a better look at her. She was tall, middle-aged, with hair the same black as Lancelot’s, cut around her ears in the same fashion he wore his. Her hands, weathered and worn, were marked with a dozen small scars from a lifetime of working with fire. She looked nice. “Everyone here seems to know me.”

“Know you?” She glanced up at him, surprised. “No. But we saw you a lot. You were kind. It’s nice to see you again, sir. You’re still kind.”

An unexpected side effect of his fall from grace was everyone’s assumption that they could give him in-depth analysis of his status as a person. It didn’t bother him for the most part, but it was curious to see the things that people would say to him when they didn’t think he was important anymore. He had always liked the various workers of Camelot, and gotten along with them with the sort of aimless grace that came from being quiet and respectful towards everyone regardless of status. Their interactions tended to be carried out in nods and half-smiles, but when he was told a name he remembered it. Portia. He turned the name over in his mouth, giving her a once-over. She had never talked to him before. But she would have known Gareth, would have been the right age to look after the stray kitchen-boys, especially those with no names and an unquenchable kind streak. It hit him then— she didn’t know. If she knew he had killed the man Beaumains had become, she would not be talking to him as she did now. The worst bit of it was that he didn’t even remember killing Gareth. There had been so many guards on the stairwell. “You’re kind too,” he said. 

A laugh burbled over her lips as she cut into the venison. The knife stuck slightly; the meat was slightly raw and too red, with a charcoal-dusting of black salt and burnt herbs on the skin. Half-cooked blood and oil slicked down the blade and onto the cutting board, soaking Portia’s hands. “Sir Lancelot the Kind, that’s what they should have called you. I never did truck with the fancy knights who called you—” She stopped, perhaps aware that reported gossip broke the rules of etiquette if not those of class. 

“No, go on,” said Lancelot, smiling despite himself. “What did they call me?”

Portia waved a hand around, flicking droplets of venison juice towards him. “Oh… prudish. Arrogant. Ah… unreliable.”

“Unreliable?” repeated Lancelot. “Or too reliable at certain things?”

“You disappeared a lot,” said Portia, narrowing her eyes at him as though his errantry had personally victimized her. “I remember. They were always very worried when you disappeared because when you showed up you were never very happy. You were never a problem for us, though.”

She pushed the platter towards him on the table. Strips of venison dripped over the hunks of rye bread, far richer than his usual fare. Guinevere had, it seemed, decided that asceticism was not for her. Heaven could wait. She was in charge for the time being. “I don’t want to be a problem for anyone,” he said, grabbing a piece of the bread. “People just thought I was problematic, and did things about it. This is good bread.”

“Thank you,” said Portia with satisfaction, and leaned her arms on the table across from him. “Never thought I’d actually talk to you. Honestly, I always thought you were— I don’t know, some sort of sea monster. Like a selkie.”

“No,” he said, “I was just raised in a lake.”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “Is that why you’re called Sir Lancelot of the Lake?”

“Uh…” He hid his laughter behind one hand. It was charming to talk to people who did not know the slightest thing about his personal life. “Yes.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the maids slink closer, watching. Probably nothing. Probably a girl curious about a former knight, and not a spy. But he was paranoid. He ran through the facts that he knew in his mind. Dorien had been a wanderer, content to travel with a monk for a fortnight or two, and had stopped at the world’s most dangerous abbey for a brief sojourn in the halls of Queen Guinevere. Then someone had pushed him down the stairs of a store room— certainly not the most usual place for nuns to venture— and stolen his pocket-knife before tramping through the blood like a complete amateur. It was almost funny how out-classed the anonymous assassin was. _You try to take out one nobody errant_ , Lancelot thought, _and find yourself contending with Guinevere._

No one should have to contend with Guinevere. 

“—the carpets with soap,” Portia was saying, when he broke out of his thoughts. “It was nonsense. Complete nonsense. And we don’t have carpets here, so it’s at least better on that front.”

“Mm.”

“But you never did anything like that.” “No,” said Lancelot, who was not entirely certain what it was he had ostensibly never done.

She patted his hand. “You’re not listening to me. I’m sure it’s a lot to take in, being here. Will you— ah— I mean— where are you sleeping?”

_Are you sleeping with Guinevere?_ was what she meant. Lancelot had slept with Guinevere many times, and sometimes he had been bleeding incriminatingly, but he had never slept with her in the way that everyone had thought he had. It didn’t matter. The crime hadn’t been sex, it had been friendship. It had been all the times they’d sat together and talked of the things people who loved one another talked about, of women and men and what those were, and whether they existed at all. It had been the sunsets seen from Camelot’s towers with three glasses of wine and a book barely legible in the half-light. It had been a million little prizes brought back from errantry and given with a laugh and a hug. It had been every single damnable time Arthur, in front of the entire court, had been beguiled by what his wife and nephew said. That had been the crime. Punishment ensued. 

“Sister Léline said there were spare rooms in one of the wings,” he said aloud. “I’m fine wherever. It’s better than the middle of a forest.”

She snorted, and her eyes flicked to her right. More of the servants had drawn near, and were sitting in a murmuring circle some distance away, partaking in the kind of conversation you partook in when you wanted to eavesdrop circumspectly. Well, at least they weren’t spies, then. Just nosy. Portia said, “I can show you to an empty room, after… I mean…” She glanced to the watchers again and then back to him, looking almost bashful. “Would you tell us a story?”

Lancelot blinked. He had expected this, but hearing it was still a surprise. They did _not know what he had done._ They heard rumours and snippets of truth and, in a charmingly painful way, assumed the best of him because he had been kinder than most in his echelon. And now they wanted a story, from someone who had never been human enough to tell stories, but now sat at the table with them and was no longer a miracle. Now they could ask. And he should tell. “What kind of story?”

“A scary story!” one of the maids piped up, abandoning all pretense of not listening. 

Lucien the page nodded ecstatically. “Ghosts?”

“Magic!”

“I don’t know any stories about ghosts and magic,” said Lancelot, frantically scanning his brain for anything that fit. A lot of things had happened to him in his life. Most had seemed very mundane at the time. “A scary story? I…” He did a quick mental reevaluation of the definition of _scary._ It was probably what he would term _interesting._ “Alright. Um, gather round, everyone, I suppose.”

The entire kitchen moved as one and clustered like flies on the floor and chairs around him. There were a lot of eyes watching. He tried to ignore them. How did you start a story? Once upon a time? It had been once upon a time— one of those nebulous times that stretched and bustled into each other. Not as long ago as it felt. Taking a deep breath, he started talking. 

“Once upon a time… I was not very happy. I was— missing people, and there was nothing to be done about it. So I loaded my saddlebags onto my horse and rode out the gates of Camelot. As I rode, I thought I saw a mountain leer up before me, but as I came to where the foothills seemed to be the ground was flat and grassy. I kept riding. You have to understand that before the Grail was found, the Wastelands changed every time you left Logres. One day there might be a wide expanse of dusty rock, pockmarked with a few twisted trees. The next there would be only riverless fields, as far as the eye could see. When you rode north of Camelot, you never knew what you were riding into.’

‘But I was looking for adventure, so I kept riding. I did not encounter a single person on the road for nearly a week. The grass fields stretched out interminably, and only on occasion would I come to a well where I replenished my waterskins. Little deer and rabbits wandered onto the road, entirely unafraid of me and my horse. I shot them and ate well.’

‘But eventually the fields came to an end and I found myself in a mottled forest, overgrown and dark. I still had not met another living soul. Then— and it was with great surprise that I found this, you might expect— I found a man lying by the foot of a small bridge. Well, I found most of a man. The head was missing.”

The circle of listeners gasped appreciatively. Lancelot, unused to talking this much, took a bite of venison. 

“After rooting around a bit I managed to find the head. Someone had cut it off. I mean— well, obviously someone had cut it off, it hadn’t just— nevermind. The point is, it had rolled down into the creek under the bridge and was sitting there half-rotten. It belonged to a nondescript-looking man; the most notable thing about his face was the spiderweb stretching across his left eye. Once I climbed down the bank into the creek I found various fingers in the underbrush as well. They belonged to him. I checked. It would have been odd if there had been extra fingers, but this isn’t that kind of scary story.”

Titters broke out among his audience, tinged with nervousness. One of the servants muttered, “It seems plenty scary so far.”

“Yes, well— it gets more intriguing.” He paused, wondered if his word choice would make him seem unhinged, and decided not to worry about it. There were no footprints around, which meant whoever had done this knew how not to be found. Which meant they were smart and experienced. Both are in short supply these days. I digress. Anyway— I dismounted and crossed the bridge on foot. Before long the forest dwindled into shrubland and the creek widened into a real river, the first I had seen since leaving Logres. At a ford a large fortress loomed over the bank. It was one of those old Roman fortifications manned by a couple score soldiers. I figured I could at least get something to eat that wasn’t undercooked and dismal.’

‘The gate was locked. I thought nothing of it at first; it was the end of the afternoon and few people rode through the Wastelands. Perhaps they did not want to bother with strangers. I knocked on the door, to no response. I stood there waiting for quite a while, in the hopes that perhaps it had simply taken them a long time to get to the door, but at length I was forced to accept that no one would let me in.’

‘That was when I realised: not a single noise was coming from inside the castle walls. There was no ring of bells, no march of guards, no sound of chatter. Nothing. It was like a ghost of a building. Well, that was odd, and I am fascinated by odd things, so I left the gate and walked around the bottom of the castle until I came to a large tree growing by the balustrade. It was an ash, and after grappling with the lower limbs for a minute I managed to pull myself up to its higher branches and scramble over the wall onto the raised walk. That was where I saw the first corpse.”

His audience, who seemed to have a better sense of drama than he did, gasped obediently, and Portia placed a glass of wine in front of him as though sensing his discomfort with talking so much.

Lancelot cleared his throat and continued. He could remember every detail of this escapade as though it had been yesterday— the pale grey stones, the gentle murmur of the ash leaves, and the deep red-brown of the dried blood smeared everywhere. It had been absolutely still and abandoned. Just him and half a hundred corpses. “He was fallen in the middle of the balustrade, a man of about forty, still dressed in a guard’s uniform and clutching a spear in his white-knuckled hand. The hand was several feet away from the rest of his body, of course. But that was not how he had died. No, someone had gutted him, and left him spread out far longer than anyone should be spread out.’

‘I moved on. It was clear that whatever had happened here had happened some time ago. Several months at the very least. All the blood was crusty and dried, and the worst of the smell had faded. Crows clustered on the battlements, but even they were silent. As I passed down the stairs into the main hall I found more bodies. All were soldiers, but some were not armoured, and instead had been pulled out of their quarters and massacred. There was no sign of an invading army, and indeed no indication that any of the castle men had succeeded in killing one of their attackers. I was quite at a loss as to what had happened. It did not look like magic, or at least not the magic that I know.’

‘Then I came to the front gate from the inside. It was locked. Beside it slumped the rotting skeleton of someone who had clearly been the gatekeeper, missing his head. His keyring was missing. Something had entered, killed him, locked the doors, and proceeded to eliminate every single person in the castle, and that something was probably the same something that had killed the man by the bridge. Well, you can imagine this was an unusual discovery even in my line of work, and it seemed there was nothing to be done, so I made my way back to the ash tree and climbed down again. Then I untethered my horse and rode back to Camelot. I had come seeking adventure and adventure I had found, of a most unorthodox sort. At court I asked if anyone knew of the castle by the river, and no one did. Even Guinevere had never heard of it. And Camelot never found out what happened or who did it, because it wasn’t for them.”

There was silence. Lancelot took a sip of his wine, and waited. 

“So… did _you_ find out?” one of the maids asked eventually, her voice shaky but inexorably curious. 

“Yes,” said Lancelot, “and I still haven’t told anyone. Anyway— I’ve been told there are free rooms somewhere. Goodnight, everyone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the _Roman van Walewein_... best text for absolutely horrifying Gawain killing sprees.


	4. Dropping Eaves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay i moved back to arizona and got really sad about life for a hot sec. im doing a lil better now and i had a great time making this gay and trans

The next morning didn’t dawn so much as it slowly seeped into the world, permeating the clear black sky of the night with an oppressive, muggy fog that crept through the windows and snuck down the rafters in the form of an unshakable chill. Lancelot woke far before matins and lay in silence, thinking. 

In his earlier days, he had always slept far too much, and it had frequently resulted in him getting kidnapped by various magical queens. They tended to have diabolical plans for him, like locking him in dungeons and providing him with leisure activities and making sure he was drinking enough water. But his days of napping in random fields were long past, and now he slept lightly and little. It might have been a quirk of middle age. He didn’t know. 

Now he lay, his eyes closed and his breathing steady, waiting as the ambient light slowly increased and the toll of the campanile grew slightly more rambunctious as the hours passed. None of the serving staff had stood out as particularly suspicious last night. On the whole, they seemed like warm and intelligent people— too warm to commit a murder, and too intelligent to commit such a clumsy one. But if Dorien had been involved with Camelot’s politics years ago, then his presence here would be an unexpected window of opportunity for anyone seeking revenge. After all, he and Garoc were headed to Camelot now. Yes, this was political somehow, he could feel it in his bones, and political meant that the killer was almost certainly a former courtier. This was a crime of passion. 

It was the perfect environment for it. He was not blind enough to think that Camelot had been heaven for everyone. Although he had ghosted over the petty squabbles between minor lords and ladies with the twofold power of his sword arm and his friends, he had always been vaguely aware that sisters were getting disinherited all the time, sons were shuffled off to unsavoury posts, and the backstabbing was literal enough that unattended burials were a common affair. For some people, surely, the fall of Arthur had been a great boon. But here Guinevere was, with her own little spider’s web in the place of the Lord. Surely someone was unhappy. That someone was probably unhappy enough to kill about it, when politics reared their obvious head in the form of Dorien.

Eventually the matins bells sounded, granting him leave to open his eyes and pretend to an empty room that he had been sleeping the whole time. Well, musing was all well and good, but at the end of the day he would have to ask Guinevere to explain things to him like he was a very naive country-dweller. If she would tell him the truth, which was uncertain. 

He had just finished dressing when a knock came at the door. Before he could answer it, a voice said: “It’s Cerise. I thought you would like a friendly face. Matins is over.” 

Smiling slightly, he swung open the door. “Some urgent business?”

“The Bishop’s man is here for the burial,” she agreed, and shoved a wrapped bundle at him. “Food. You should eat quickly, the Prioress wants you there. You’re going to stand in the background and pretend to be a groundskeeper.”

“I should—” He glanced down at himself. “I should be dressed like a groundskeeper, then.”

Cerise grinned at him. “You are. Come on, eat, eat. I can’t stand here waiting for you forever.”

He tore off a bite of the rough bread she had given him, and spoke around the mouthful. It was Cerise. She was fine. “Is there an actual groundskeeper?”

“No, Enide and some of the younger sisters look after everything in that respect. But the Bishop’s man, although an ass, is not the sharpest tack in the shed, and as long as his awful sneak of a notary doesn’t raise a stink, we get away with whatever we want. That’s why we have kitchen staff.”

“Awful sneak of a notary?”

Cerise’s nails clicked on the door frame in exasperation. “Julian. I loathe him. He has the look of a man who would have been very obnoxious at tournaments if only he had been born ten years earlier. As it is he miscalculates things and makes it everyone’s problem.”

“You’re very vehement about this,” Lancelot observed mildly. “Is this a repressed urge towards arithmetic or a genuine desire to see him dead?”

Clicking her tongue, Cerise confiscated the napkin from him in one punitive grab, and handed a small spade to him which she pulled from seemingly thin air. “I’m not seventeen and out for revenge anymore,” she said. “Seriously, you ask a man to saw off one head for you and he never lets you live it down! It was one time, Lancelot. Julian is fine. Well, he’s not fine, he’s an obnoxious bastard, but I wouldn’t do anything about it.”

“Mhm,” said Lancelot, clutching his spade, and mentally crossed Cerise off of his list of suspects. Not that she had been particularly high on it in the first place— no, he had the strong sense that whoever had killed Dorien was someone he did not know. “Alright. Show me to where I am supposed to be gardening.”

Cerise led him down the meandering staircase and through the ground wing, this time cutting through a side door that exited on the main lawns instead of the inner courtyard. Today the sun had made a half-hearted attempt at emerging but, faced with the prospect of another day shining on Lancelot, had clearly backtracked and left only a pale trickle of light that saturated the clouds a sickly yellow. Eventually they stopped in front of a large bush. 

“Bush,” said Cerise, pointing. 

Lancelot nodded in agreement and pointed beyond the bush. “Bench,” he observed. “Next to graveyard.”

“Here the queen shall hold court.” She kicked vaguely at the ground, sending a nearby sparrow scattering away into the air. “And the king’s right hand will lurk behind the bushes.”

“Queen’s right hand,” muttered Lancelot, “we can be honest now Arthur is dead.”

“Get behind your bush.”

“Yes, Sir Cerise.”

Lancelot sat behind the bush for approximately ten minutes before the sound of voices ambled towards him: a youngish male voice, presumably the priest sent by the Bishop to carry out the burial, interspersed with Guinevere’s passing impression of being matronly and caring. He wasn’t entirely sure what groundskeepers did, but the spade Cerise had given him seemed enough of a disguise, so he flipped it around a couple times aimlessly in his hand. It was a nice spade, heavy and surprisingly sharp, sharp enough to plunge into someone’s eye socket, heavy enough to deliver a damning blow to the back of the head. If only, he thought— not without a measure of wry humour— if only he had been brought here to take care of a more material problem.  _ Stopping  _ murderers was hardly his forte. 

“This is Father Giuseppe,” came Guinevere’s voice, pitched to carry. “It is a great honour to us that the Bishop has sent him.”   
The assembled sisters chorused their hellos. Then Father Giuseppe spoke. “I met the deceased once before, you should know, in Tours. He was a good man. It is a great pity that he died in your abbey.” Before anyone could respond to what seemed a slightly barbed comment, he said, “How has the body been treated?”

“Very well,” said Guinevere, “we kept vigil over it day and night with candles.”

_ M-hm _ , thought Lancelot. In fact what had happened was that he had hoisted the be-sacked corpse of Dorien onto a wine barrel the night before, put an apple on its head so it looked slightly jauntier, and locked the door in case anyone with finer sensibilities wandered by. 

“Well, that’s as should be. Come, align yourselves. We shall begin the service.”

There was Latin. There was a lot of Latin, followed by a bit of Greek, which Lancelot was fairly sure the good Father only threw in there to show off. He moved bushes, once, in case anyone was judging his quality as a fake groundskeeper. No one seemed to notice. 

Finally, an hour or so later, the funeral trudged to a close and the sisters began to wander off in small groups. Lancelot heard the earthy  _ clunk  _ of a shovel digging into the earth— Father Giuseppe’s servant, most likely. Then Guinevere’s voice drifted over to him. “Thank you so much for coming, Father. It is a great honour to receive you.”

“You don’t keep a tidy ship, Mother Prioress.” Father Giuseppe’s voice was breathy and wheedling. Lancelot hated it. “Your little flock of birds doesn’t even know how to stand in proper lines.”

Ten years ago Guinevere would have responded with something intelligent and snide that would irritate her antagonist and reinforce her own social position. Now she seemed to have no patience for that sort of thing. “Yes, yes… the Archbishop is inquiring after me, I’m sure.”

“The Archbishop doesn’t have any thoughts to spare for  _ you _ ,” said Father Giuseppe. Idly, Lancelot wondered what would happen if he jumped out at a priest of the Holy Trinity and snapped his neck before bolting off into the woods like a feral hog. Guinevere would yell at him, probably, but he could run faster than she could and had more experience avoiding repercussions for murder. 

Footsteps crunched away from Lancelot, leading down the gravel path back to the abbey. “If he cares so little for us,” said Guinevere, her voice getting fainter, “then I am truly grateful you would stoop to visit us, Father Giuseppe. It must be quite the dishonour.”

Uncertain what exactly he was supposed to be observing, Lancelot peered over his bush. The pair had meandered a distance down the path, so he stood and, twirling his spade in one hand, made his way on the gravel some ways behind them, looking as groundskeeperly as possible. The only thing he had observed here today was that Guinevere hated the middleman, which was not a surprise and also not a particularly relevant piece of information. He didn’t care about politics. He wasn’t—

—the kind of person who would be spying from behind a bush without being strictly instructed to do so. 

Lancelot could move very fast when he wanted to. He pounced to the opposite side of the path like a wolf, shooting a hand down and grabbing a wrist. Attached to the wrist was— God damn it. One of the two girls from the kitchen, the young nuns. He had forgotten which was which. She flailed in his grip, but before she could scream and get them both caught he slammed his other hand over her mouth. 

She bit him. 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” said Lancelot. No one had bitten him in a long time and it surprised him quite a bit. As patiently as he could, he whispered, “I’m going to let go of you and the two of us are going to go for a nice walk in the opposite direction, yes? There’s no point in running. I’ll chase after you and yell about eavesdroppers, and that would look very bad for you. Nod if you agree.”

Her gaze baleful but fear-tinged, she nodded. Lancelot removed his hands and fought the urge to apologise.

“Fuck you,” she said vehemently, but under her breath, and she obediently began to walk up the path away from Guinevere and the Father. “You’re lucky it was me. If you’d done that to Aicha she would have panicked. You can’t just grab people.”

So this was Thaïs. Lancelot gave an apologetic sigh and followed at her side. “I don’t go around grabbing young women on the regular,” he said defensively, “it was an unusual situation. But I am sorry.”

“I’ll forgive it, since you so graciously apologised.” Thaïs gave him a curt nod. She wasn’t making eye contact, and despite her grit it was obvious she was deeply shaken. “Are you going to report me? I don’t have anywhere to go.”

They reached a fork in the path and at her nervous gesture he turned left, into a small manicured copse hidden from the rest of the grounds. Cypress trees jetted up out of the ground around him, perfectly arranged and with a faint smell that reminded him of the old, magic-tinged Logres. Guinevere must have had them imported from the continent. “We can pause here. Sit down. You’re fine.”

She sat, heedless of the dirt and twigs, her habit rumpled around her ankles. “I know I’m fine. I think if I wasn’t fine I would be dead. Are you going to report me?”

“Ah—” Lancelot  _ hated  _ lying. He was dreadful at it, besides. “Yes, but not to get you in trouble. I promise Gui— the Prioress won’t do anything. What were you spying for?”

“Fun.”

“Look,” said Lancelot wearily. He knew Thaïs to her bones. He had known the sort of person she might become for decades. “You don’t lose the conversation if you take it seriously. I’m not going to threaten you. But what on earth do you think I’m here for?”

“The Prioress’ guard dog,” mumbled Thaïs, lowering her gaze. “You were spying too. Are you here to kill the priest, or something?”

Lancelot threw his hands in the air, sliding to the ground in front of her. “I’m not here to kill anyone! I promise! I’m a hermit, not the Grim Reaper, Thaïs.” He paused. It was very odd, he reflected, to be sitting in the gravel with a rebellious young nun talking about crime. “Why? Do you want him dead?”

“What?” Her eyes wide, she met his gaze for the first time. “No. I don’t understand why he’s so rude to the Prioress, though.”

A small smile crept across his face. “You like her,” he realised. “Not for old allegiances. Just for the time you’ve known her. Why are you and Aicha here?”

“Marriage would have been bad for Aicha.” One of her hands prodded truculently at the gravel. “And I didn’t want her to be lonely. It was the nearest abbey that would take the both of us.”

“That’s really sweet. And Guinevere has been good to you?”

Thaïs gave him a suspicious frown. “How do I know you’re not going to turn around and tell all of this to her?” 

“I promise you there’s nothing you could tell me that she doesn’t know,” said Lancelot wryly. “It’s always been that way.”

“She— I mean, she’s strict. Reminds me of the travelling schoolteacher who made me read star charts all the way from Baghdad when I said I wanted to know how the world worked. I say that because one time I was admitted to her rooms to deliver tea and she had one of them on the wall. Something to do with—”

“—the seasons and crop yields,” Lancelot said nostalgically. It had hung on her wall as long as he had known her, so a part of any space Guinevere considered hers that he hadn’t even noticed it when he had talked to her the previous day. “Our friend Morgan gave it to her as a wedding present.”

Thaïs blinked. “Morgan  _ le Fay? _ Do you know her? You— I— you’re really straight out of the stories, aren’t you? I thought Rheged was a myth.”

“Rheged is real enough. Less real than many places, but more than stories.” Lancelot stopped. Frowned. “You’re side-tracking me. Why were you eavesdropping on them?”

Staring at the worked gravel in between them, Thaïs sighed. “Léline was worried the Father was here to reprimand the Prioress. We’re not stupid, we know this abbey doesn’t run like most do.” Then, with sudden violence: “God, you men ruin  _ everything _ .”

There was nothing he could say to this. She was right. Despite a brief confused period before he was old enough to understand why it felt like he was wearing a mask all the time, he was a man; if there was one thing he was good at, it was ruining everything. “You’re scared the Archbishop wants her replaced with someone who wouldn’t be as tolerating of— ah— friendships.”

“Why did you say friendships like that?” said Thaïs, in a tone of the utmost suspicion.

Lancelot spent his time nowadays wandering from town to town, performing odd jobs and sulking in the forest. There was nothing worth hiding anymore, and when he had been her age he would have given quite a bit to know he wasn’t alone. “Guinevere has a habit of attracting people for whom marriage would be against nature, or at the very least only half of a wider world. People like me.”

“I— that—” Suddenly Thaïs looked very close to tears. “You think she knows? About— me and Aicha?”

So he had guessed right. “I guarantee it. Look. I’ll let you in on a secret that is only a secret because no one ever believes me. We weren’t lovers. Anyway, about the spying—”

“You  _ weren’t _ ?” yelped Thaïs, vulnerability swept aside to make way for a gleeful love of drama. “Are you serious?”

Lancelot sighed. “Yes. I’ve never even kissed her. But— coming back to the subject at hand,” he continued, as sternly as he could manage, “you were hoping to— I’m sorry, talk me through this, actually. What on earth were you hoping to do?”

Twisting her mouth, Thaïs picked up a pebble and tossed it moodily away from her. “If me and Aicha found out what was going on, we could— help her— I don’t know. We didn’t really think.”

“I promise you Guinevere does not need your help. One more question, and then I’ll let you be, alright?”

She perked up. “Alright.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

“No. No, no— I— what?” She scooted back away from him as though she could physically distance herself from the concept. “Why are you asking me that? Did—  _ oh.  _ Are you here to find a killer?” Before he could interrupt, she ploughed on, thoughts tumbling over her lips. “That man died. They said he fell down the stairs. He didn’t, did he? Oh, God.”

_ Oh, God,  _ thought Lancelot. He appeared to have made a grave error. “Don’t worry about it?” he tried. 

“Are we safe? Is the killer still here? Is— oh Jesu— is it one of us? Or did a man sneak in and—”

“I’m dealing with it. Ah— deep breaths, Thaïs— that’s it. Don’t say anything.” He repeated that, more forcefully. “ _ Don’t  _ say anything. You promise me? I told you a secret, you owe it to keep another one. Do you promise me?”

“Yes.” She nodded furiously. “Yes. I promise. Just Aicha. And Léline. And Eni—”

“ _ No one _ ,” said Lancelot quietly. There were no threats he would make, but he had years of practice promising retribution through tone alone. And, hopefully, that on its own would work. “Agreed?”

“No one. Yes. Will you— I mean— I didn’t do it. I really didn’t. Don’t let the Prioress think I did it. Please.”

“Of course.” He pushed himself to standing and offered her a hand up, which she declined. “Run along, Thaïs. Tell Aicha that I’m looking after the Prioress. And that— well, I suppose— tell her the two of you aren’t alone.”

Thaïs gave a feeble salute and a feebler smile. “Yes, sir.”

She left. Lancelot stood in the quiet cypress grove for a long moment, gazing at the spotless overcast sky unmarred by birds or sun. Perhaps Guinevere would make something of this. She always knew everything. Once upon a time, she had even deigned to give him explanations.


	5. The Queen of the Board

Guinevere was waiting for him in the little room above the stairs. He had returned there because he knew she would find him if she wanted him. Apparently she wanted him immediately. 

“Don’t lock the door,” she ordered, even before he had had a chance to step into the room. 

_I know not to lock doors for important conversations_ , he very tactfully did not point out. Instead he observed, “Eavesdroppers everywhere.”

“Hopefully not here, but I’ll keep options open,” said Guinevere. She was leaning up against the window frame in a position that made a pass at ‘elegantly nonchalant’ but instead landed somewhere nearer ‘in need of support.’ One of her hands was shaking ever-so-slightly, and Lancelot wondered if she noticed. “Well?”

Carefully, he placed his spade on the floor by the door before making his way over to the solitary chair. “Don’t think I was very helpful.”

She studied him for a moment, her dark eyes slackly-lidded and tired. “Who was it?”

“Thaïs,” he said, shrugging a laugh. There was no dissembling, not from Guinevere. “Not your killer. I promise.”

“Well, you would know.” With a sigh of pain so faint he would not have heard it if the room hadn’t been quite so quiet and he hadn’t known her quite so well, she pushed herself off of the window frame and made as if to leave. “I’ll let you be, then. It was worth a try.”

“Wait.”

She stopped. “Excuse me, Lancelot?”

“I— that is—” And then suddenly, piteously, two years of being stoic and collected brought the anvil down on his head, and tears came out. His eyes stang and a familiar salty tinge took over his vision, and he felt very young— as he had been, once, at a time that felt very long ago— and very alone, which he had never been before the end. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Guinevere watching him impassively. Through gasping, hiccupy breaths, he managed, “Why do you have to— why do you— do you have to hate me?”

For a long moment she was silent, and he was by himself in a room with a weak mockery of sunlight and a pale statue of his old friend. His sobs drowned in the wooden rafters. Then, her voice tight and blanched-white, she said, “I would have thought you’d gotten rid of the sword.”

“Oh,” said Lancelot, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of one hand. “ _Oh._ Where is it?”

Her lip curled. “Tucked under the sheets like a lover. What, you forgot?”

There was no point in checking to make sure she was telling the truth, but he did anyway. An ornately-worked red hilt lay on the linen pillow-case, indenting the fabric, the dark gemstones on the pommel glinting lowly in the bland midday light. “I didn’t forget,” said Lancelot hollowly, “I had hoped it would leave me alone here.”

This was one of those statements that took quite a large amount of time to really land. “ _What?_ ” said Guinevere, her eyes widening into an expression of comic surprise. “It’s— good Lord— it’s _alive?_ It _follows_ you? What— what the hell is that thing?”

“The Grail,” said Lancelot. “I think.”

She stood stock-still, working this around in her mouth like a cow chewing the cud. “And that’s— I’m supposed to forgive you, then? I’m supposed to accept it wasn’t your fault? God did it all?”

“Don’t know about God,” Lancelot murmured. His eyes slid off hers when he tried to look her in the face. “Me or the devil. Or both. Doesn’t matter. It still hurts.”

“Good,” said Guinevere.

Rather than answer that, Lancelot stood and made his way over to the bed. The red-hilted sword winked at him from under the sheets. He seized it by the hilt, clicked open the latch on the window, and before Guinevere could object he flung it outside. 

“Oh,” said Guinevere, “running from your problems. Again. Does it feel just like old times?”

He shut the window. “Just— don’t ask about it. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.” What he wanted was to stop talking, but the words kept coming. “Just let me do my stupid job that you asked me here to do while you watch over everything and hate it all. _You_ sent _me_ a letter, after all.”

When he looked up she was staring at him with an expression he had only seen once before on her face, like someone had pulled the floor out from under her and she was trying to cry but didn’t quite know how. Then: “ _I miss him too,_ you know.”

“I— what?” He felt stupid saying it. He felt stupid standing there in the middle of the room with nothing in his hands. He felt stupid. Guinevere was beautiful and brilliant and knew him like the back of her hand, and she had never before tried to make him feel stupid, and the worst of it was he didn’t think she was trying to now. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“Why are you yelling?”

“Why are you— ugh!” She turned away from him with sudden violence, one stray lock of hair whipping around her habit. “Stop it.”

“I’m not doing anything,” said Lancelot miserably. “I’m just— oh, _fuck_. Sorry. I’m crying again.”

Far away, the bells began to ring. Lancelot ignored them, focused on the hot wet sensation of tears sticking to his cheeks, the way the room swam, and the fact that at least he knew what he was here to do. He was here to solve a murder. He was a murderer doing too little too late. Most head injuries bled out fast, didn’t they? Dorien had died quickly. Far quicker than others. And then he was crying again. 

It took him a second to realise that arms were encircling him, hesitant and frail but there nonetheless. His breath shaky, he nestled his head on Guinevere’s shoulder. “You should cut your hair,” she whispered in his ear. “It’s not dashingly ill-kept or some nonsense. It just looks shabby.”

“Mhm.” Lancelot closed his eyes. “That’s it, then? Jealous of my crying?”

She took a deep breath, her chest expanding in great shudders against his arm. “I know it’s not really your fault, you know,” she said, very quietly. A part of him wondered how hard it was for her to say it. “Not the— I mean— he—”

“Gawain,” said Lancelot, like she might have forgotten. The name tasted rotten in his mouth.

“—he did— worse things— I mean… oh, Lord. God. You didn’t kill him with a head wound.”

“I know.”

“You killed him when you came to rescue me. Like he was there on the stairs with Gareth and Gaheris. That’s when you killed him.”

“Yes,” said Lancelot, and again, “I know.”

She gave him a squeeze halfway between a hug and a weak jostle. “I always knew you went a bit funny in a fight. Never thought it would be my problem. I wouldn’t have cared how many of Arthur’s knights you killed if you had only managed to leave the brothers alone.”

“And now you run a nunnery,” muttered Lancelot, humour peaking through his tears. 

“With dead bodies. This isn’t forgiveness, you know.”

“I know.”

Her skin felt cold and corpse-like against his own. When had she gotten so pale and frozen? Was age reclaiming its lost years? Her voice, too, was dry and brittle. “I wonder what would happen if I said I forgave you. There’s nothing for us to… I think we’re better apart. We were very dangerous friends.”

“Mm. Nothing to accomplish, that’s what you mean. I know. And the— the guilt.”

Guinevere giggled, and for an instant she sounded like a young girl. “We picked a very inopportune time to develop our respective consciences. I think Gawain would feel very flattered.”

“He would.” A pause. “You know, he always worried you secretly didn’t like him.”

“Yes. I told him I did. Multiple times. He didn’t believe me. What am I, a liar?”

“An expert one.”

“Yes, well.” She sighed, very faintly, and pushed herself to standing. “I hope you’re happier now I’ve prostrated my well-hidden emotions at your feet. I can’t forgive you. Not because I don’t want to, but— I would feel too guilty. You understand.”

He understood what she meant by this, which was _I still love you_ , and he understood not to acknowledge it. “We should solve your murder. Give one back, as it were.”

“You and me against the world,” she said, her voice surprisingly cheery as she held out a hand to help him up. “Just like old times. For a week, or however long you’re here. And then we can return to piety and solitude as self-flagellation. I’m sure Christ won’t mind the vacation from my prayers.”

“One villain to defame,” agreed Lancelot. With the cuff of one sleeve he wiped at his salt-stained face. “It’s good to have a simple problem.”

Guinevere chuckled and swung the door open. “Reunited for one last time, a corpse at our feet— and this time we’re the heroes. It’s good for the ego. You may have faced your sins, but I haven’t, and I think God has given up on me at this point.”

This wasn’t true. Guinevere had been facing her sins every single day since the one on which she got married— epithets, slurs, accusations true and false, threats of such violence that even Lancelot would have blinked to carry them out. It was with perfect clarity that he remembered the first time King Arthur had mentioned, almost timidly, that the punishment for adultery was to be flayed alive. The look on Gawain’s face had been one of utter revulsion, so visceral that it was a surprise he didn’t leave the room on the spot. Guinevere had been as impassive as always. She was used to punishments for things she had not done. “I would like to make the most of it, then. If this is our grand last stand.”

“Last,” said Guinevere. “Yes.”

That was an emotion, but Lancelot was kind enough to ignore it, instead shutting the door gently behind them. “If you show me your favourite place we could discuss where we stand.”

“We stand on the staircase,” she said imperiously.

They did indeed. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Thank you, Guinevere.” And then, more earnestly: “ _Thank_ you, Guinevere.”

“Don’t thank me. I’ll feel terribly guilty if you remind me I don’t hate you. I will show you a good tree. You’ll like it. It has mushrooms.” 

“I don’t like mushrooms,” pointed out Lancelot, but he followed her down the stairs nonetheless.

“Well, they’re not edible. You look at them. Come on— we have a murder to discuss.”

The tree stood at the south end of the abbey grounds, a crisp and perfect beech that arched up into the sky like the epitomized essence of what a tree should be. Funny little mushrooms clustered around its roots, and Lancelot could agree they were good to look at. He was oddly touched that Guinevere had thought he might enjoy them. 

She eased herself down onto the low stone bench by the side of the trunk, leaving him to face her standing, his arms crossed. “So,” she said, “I suppose you have questions, now that we’re talking to one another.”

Lancelot mulled this over, listening to the breeze whistling through the soft beech leaves. “Who did you think would be listening in on your conversation with that rude priest man?”

“Not Thaïs.” She shrugged, one hand idly tracing the edge of the bench. “I hoped it would be someone a little more suspicious. Some sinister figure who would solve all our problems. Did Thaïs say anything pertinent?”

“No.”

"Of course it wouldn't be that easy."

“Sowhat do we know?”

In a fit of exasperation, Guinevere huffed out a breath. “Nothing. We’ve got a dead body and a missing knife and various nuns who are either too good to kill someone or sufficiently under my thumb to tell me if they did.”

“I talked to the serving people. I don’t think it was any of them.”

“Oh?”

Casting his eyes about, he checked to be very sure there were no nearby bushes behind which people could lurk. The hill was grassy but otherwise barren of suspicious foliage. “I think this is politics. Can you— explain? What’s happening?”

“Nothing more than it ever is. King Constantine wants advice. I advise him.” And that might have been it, perhaps, if Lancelot hadn’t known her quite so well, and if she hadn’t known him in return. She squirmed under his gaze, something like guilt fluttering across her face. “What?”

“What,” said Lancelot, very slowly, like a wolf stalking its prey, “do you advise him about, exactly?”

Guinevere twisted her mouth, but didn’t break eye contact. “Don’t ask me that.”

The bells rang again behind him, causing her to wince and narrow her eyes as though looking at the sun. Lancelot went in for the kill. “You’ve been telling him secrets, haven’t you,” he predicted, stepping closer to her. “Little bits of gossip. So he knows what strings to pull. Is that it? He’s your nephew; I may not be— I mean— I don’t like politics, but I know you swim in them. You don’t have to hide from me of all people.”

“Alright,” said Guinevere, recovering from the blow of the ringing campanile and levelling him with a gaze that was almost saucy. “Then I’ll tell you. I’ve been letting King Constantine know where his men might find knights who survived Camlann. The ones who left. Like you.”

Echoes sounded hollowly around the abbey grounds. “Ah. Well.” Lancelot uncrossed his arms, felt awkward about it, and crossed them once more. Then he decided to throw decorum to the wind and sat down on the grass by Guinevere’s feet. It was the second time that day that he had had important conversations sitting cross-legged on the grounds of a dead abbey, he mused idly, the grass scratching at his ankles. “I don’t— I don’t think you mean find them to congratulate them.”

“Oh, no.” She sniffed, folding her skirts politely under her ankles so they stopped blowing in his face. “They’ve all been killed. Rome is fallen and Constantinople is risen, I believe the logic is. Are you— damn it. Are you mad at me?”

“Who?”

“That I know of? Grifflet. Elyan. Meriadoc.”

“Oh, I hated Meriadoc...” Lancelot said wistfully, tilting his head. “I wonder how he died. I hope it was painful.”

“I hate to steal your fun, but it was probably business-like. They don’t have you on staff anymore. No artisanry these days.” But under the cornhusk sheath of a dark joke, her voice sounded tight and nervous. 

Lancelot thought about this. It was very bad. He could see it was very bad. But he also didn’t particularly care. “You didn’t tell him anything that let him find me,” he observed, “I’m— touched, I suppose.”

“Oh, no, I did,” said Guinevere, “I just knew they wouldn’t succeed. I suppose he stopped sending knights after a while. Do you really have that many run-ins on the road?”

“I—” Now that he thought about it, there _had_ been a period of time where he seemed to be digging surreptitious holes in the forest practically once a week. He hadn’t thought much of it, save that he had noticed that as the graves dwindled, the red-hilted sword made more frequent appearances. It only ever inserted itself into his space when he was around other people, and he had never wasted thoughts wondering what exactly it wanted him to do with it in these situations. _That_ he had known ever since it had first been his. “Oh. I just thought I was unlucky. Should I be hurt you sent assassins after me?”

Guinevere shrugged, but there was something relieved in her face. “I think it was a compliment I didn’t spare you. I knew you would be fine. Do you care?”

“No, it’s fine. Thank you.” A vague estranged part of Lancelot’s brain waved the timid idea that perhaps he should be concerned at the fact he thought this was flattering instead of deeply disturbing. He ignored it as he had always done. “You don’t think someone might have found out you were— I mean—”

“Trading away old friends’ lives to keep my stupid little nunnery untouched?” 

“Ah— yes.”

“Possible, I suppose. It could— hold on.” She stood all of a sudden, nudging him with one foot.

When he turned his head he saw a small party made up of the Bishop’s man from that morning whose name he had already forgotten, along with a lanky clerk and two nuns. The priest strode up imperiously and spoke without greeting Guinevere. “I demand to speak.”

“You are,” she said.

“I— what?”

One of the nuns, a young girl with frazzled brown hair and an expression that spoke of valiant determination not to cry, raised a polite hand. “Mother Prioress,” she said, “the esteemed Garoc is dead.”


	6. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for use of one sexist slur

“Well, this is very sad,” said Guinevere, her hands on her hips, frowning down at the body that had until recently housed the spirit of Garoc. “Did any of you do this?”

The five people standing in a semicircle behind her shook their heads frantically, except for Lancelot, who was distracted by the body. Garoc was slumped in a half-lean against the headrest of his chaise-longue, his face withered and pale and one arm stuck awkwardly under his torso. His eyes were very slightly open. 

Here was what had happened, as far as Lancelot could tell: a junior nun named Mariole had, upon being told to bring Garoc his afternoon tea, knocked on the door to no response. She had politely left him for “I don’t know— I’m so sorry— a— a half an hour?” during which, presumably, the bulk of the dying had occurred. (Upon discovering this, Guinevere had levelled Mariole with a look more chilling than any Lancelot had seen in two years, which warmed his heart slightly.) Then, worrying she would get in trouble for shirking her duty, she had returned and called out to him again. Nothing. She had knocked. Nothing. She had then opened the door. 

“Was it a heart attack?” whispered Mariole’s confidante, whose name Lancelot had promptly forgotten. He remembered _Mariole_ because of a funny story Gawain used to tell about his friend’s grandmother who lived in a tree. 

Guinevere paced behind the chaise-longue, her lips pursed. “Probably. I feel dreadfully, of course.” This was a lie. “Who asked you to bring him wine, Mariole?”

There was an intake of breath. Lancelot, a faint smile on his lips, watched the nun’s face. She looked surprised but not secretive. “Um— Aicha. She had to help Léline with something on the grounds. I had forgotten— sorry, I would have mentioned it. So much happened.”

The Father whose name Lancelot had forgotten cleared his throat obnoxiously. “Mother Prioress, it seems to me people have a nasty habit of dropping dead in your abbey.”

“It’s tragic, isn’t it, Father Giuseppe?” said Guinevere airily, turning from the chaise and casting an inspecting glance to the rest of the small guest room. “I wonder if God disapproves of the presence of men. I would hate for anything to happen to you.”

“Is that a threat?” said the nasally assistant, his face twitching as Father Giuseppe closed and opened his mouth like a goldfish. “Are you threatening us?”

Guinevere whimpered, and even Lancelot, who was hardly attuned to social cues, could tell she was overdoing it. “Never!”

“That’s it?” said the clerk, straightening his broad shoulders and stepping forward. Suddenly Lancelot recalled what Cerise had said about the _awful sneak of a notary_. He had the frame of a born jouster. “You think we don’t know who _he_ is?”

He jabbed a finger towards Lancelot, who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. The whole room turned to stare at him. He felt himself blushing, damnably, stupidly. “Ah… sorry?”

“King Arthur’s rabid dog? You just _happened_ to be meeting with him on the day that poor Garoc turns up dead, seemingly of natural causes?” His voice was rapidly crescendoing, and the two sisters had backed up to the far wall to get as far away from the scene as they could. “And then you threaten good Father Giuseppe? You lying _slut._ ”

Everyone froze, even the clerk, his face shuttering as though his mind had caught up with his words. The two nuns looked as though they were about to either cry or be violently ill. Father Giuseppe was glaring generically around the room. Lancelot, good rabid dog that he was, flicked his eyes to Guinevere for an indication of how to react. 

She gave a small smile, very polite, and something of King Arthur’s radiant bride entered her dead face. Aside from a tightness around her mouth, she gave no indication that she had even heard the epithet thrown her way. “My dear Julian,” she said, folding her hands carefully on the back rest of the chaise, “It seems to me you are questioning the good Archbishop’s appointments. If you believe he has let a devil into the house of the lord then perhaps it would be more respectful of you to take it up with him, rather than discussing it behind his back. Sister Mariole!”

“Y— yes, Mother?”

“Please show Father Giuseppe and Julian to their quarters. Perhaps you should keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t drop dead as well.”

The two nuns looked at each other, their eyes wide, and then back at Guinevere. The one who wasn’t named Mariole said, “Could I ask a question?”

“No,” said Guinevere, and gestured at the door.

When the party had shuffled out, sullen and shaken, Lancelot clicked the door closed behind them and leant on it to be sure no aggravating notaries would immediately try to force their way back in. “Bastard,” he said. “I suppose it’s been a while since you’ve had to deal with that.”

This earned him a breath of laughter. With the audience gone Guinevere had crumpled into herself, her expression drained. “Well, I’m a liar, but it’s been a few years since I was properly a slut as well. I’m flattered by the assumption.”

“No, you’re not.”

“No. Anyway. What do you want to say? You want to say something.”

Instead of answering, Lancelot pushed himself off of the door and knelt by Garoc’s body, sliding a hand under his stiff collar and peeling back an eyelid with the other. His eyes were filmy and distant, but— 

“Oh, he’s not dead, is he?” breathed Guinevere, and hurried over to crouch next to him. “How long?”

Lancelot closed his eyes and concentrated on the very, very faint pulse under his fingers. “Don’t know. Don’t think you could do anything about it without magic. And I’m not sure it would be worth the trade.”

“He might have seen— no. Probably not. Not if he was poisoned like I suspect. He wouldn’t remember, anyway.” She rocked back onto the floor, her arms propped on her knees. 

“The cat’s out of the bag, isn’t it?”

“Mm?”

“If even a dullard like Julian knows something is unnatural about this— everyone will be whispering murder in an hour.”

“Ah. Yes.” He paused, a thought trickling across his mind. “You could probably use that.”

“Oh?”

He didn’t actually have anything in mind, but Guinevere always had things in mind. Patiently, he waited for alien mental processes to occur. 

It took a few moments, but then her eyes narrowed and her head whipped around. “Go get Mariole or Defne for me. If they’re still with the Father then they’ll be in the West wing, first floor. Ask anyone for directions loudly and say you’ve got good news.”

“Ah!” He pushed himself to his feet, an old feeling of excitement coursing through him, half-familiar like a song you heard in your childhood and then forgot. “What’s our good news?”

A long, slow grin spread across her face. “The esteemed Garoc isn’t dead,” she said, “and he will soon recover and tell us everything he knows.”

“Ring the bells!” said Lancelot to the first nun he met on the stairwell. He pitched his voice to carry, which was an unusual sensation. “Garoc is alive and the Mother Prioress is praying to hasten his safe recovery!” Without waiting for a response, he continued down into the courtyard, zipping down the path between the pallid rose-bushes and half-bloomed lavender, calling out to the sisters working in the garden. He suspected that perhaps he was overdoing it, but this wasn’t graded. 

He found Mariole and Defne exactly where Guinevere had told him they would be, caught in an uncomfortable-looking conversation with Julian, who was looming in the doorframe. Lancelot propelled himself forward, feeling more chipper than he had in months. “Hello!” he said. Julian flinched. “I have good news. Garoc is alive and will be recovering soon. Sister Mariole, Sister Defne, the Prioress wants you to watch over him.”

“You can’t just—” 

“Please stay in your rooms,” said Lancelot, leaning forward until he was so close that Julian had to tilt his head up awkwardly to look him in the eyes. “And then I’m sure nothing bad will happen to you.”

For a second they stood like that, caught in a mutual attempt to outstare one another while the two junior nuns watched, but Lancelot could go over ten minutes without blinking and most normal people could not do that. Finally Julian took a step back, spat, and closed the door in his face. Lancelot grinned at the polished wood. Life was back on track. Stupid plots, stupider response schemes, Guinevere lying, and the ability to threaten people— it was a good moment in time. It would pass, as all good things did, but he would enjoy it for the time being. 

The second nun, Defne, said, “Thank you. Are we really summoned by the Prioress?”

“Oh. Yes. Same room.” They looked at him expectantly. “Garoc has a pulse,” he explained. “Tell everyone the good news?”

“Yes, sir,” said Mariole, grabbed Defne by the sleeve, and dragged the two of them off. As they were leaving, Defne yelled back to him again. “Thank you very much, Sir Lancelot!”

Well, that was the rumour mill taken care of. Julian and Father Giuseppe would keep in their rooms if they knew what was good for them, and Guinevere had a handle on making sure the abbey population at large knew without a doubt, as confirmed by Mariole and Defne, that Garoc still had a pulse. Events were currently very distracting, and whoever had killed Dorien— even if they hadn’t tried to kill Garoc as well— would certainly have important matters to attend to. Which meant it was a perfect opportunity for Lancelot to do some sneaking. 

There was, he reasoned, as he ambled down the corridor in the vague direction of the kitchens, no real lead anywhere in the situation except the strange detail of the missing knife. Someone had taken it. Perhaps it had had blood on it, or another indication that Dorien had not fallen down the stairs out of his own incompetence. But it seemed such an oversight; replacing it at his hip would have been very simple. The killer was not used to watching where they stepped, but that was an error of inexperience, not stupidity. The stolen knife seemed stupid.

Lancelot stopped, one foot still on the last step of a small flight of stairs. Unwittingly, he had retraced the route to the exact store room where Dorien had been found. And something had just occurred to him. 

If you had not been the one to scrub the blood off of the floor, you would never have known a man had died in this room. The door had been propped open— normally it was locked, but Guinevere had wanted to put on a facade of having nothing to hide. The shelves sat politely, stacked with dried produce and sacks of grain. The small flight of stairs at the far end showed no indication of having killed someone. Lancelot padded up them, excitement buzzing in his veins. 

Stupidly, distractedly, they had not searched the room at the top of the stairs thoroughly. Neither Guinevere nor Lancelot had stopped to realise that in order to be pushed down stairs, you had to be at the top of them. Whatever Dorien had been doing in this room had not been limited to the stores of grain. Lancelot pulled aside the curtain at the end of the landing. 

The small storage closet which housed the more esoteric requirements of an abbey looked exactly the same as it had when he had given it a cursory glance the day before. Boxes of incense and stacks of candles huddled next to each other on the cramped shelves. There was so much crammed into one small room that it would be very easy to overlook a small, metallic implement— say, a pocket knife hastily tossed aside. A once-over the previous day had turned up nothing, but now Lancelot knew what he was looking for, and he could be very methodical when he wanted to be.

And there it was, jammed between a sack of dried rosemary, a shelf, and the wall. Lancelot reached down to pick it up, and in doing so was brought eye-to-eye with a small chest on the bottom shelf. 

A chest with a solid lock and frantic scratching on the wood around the seam. 

He clicked his tongue, a smile pulling at his lips, and slipped the knife into his pocket before sliding the chest off the shelf. Perhaps Dorien had done the exact same thing a scant two days before, and perhaps it was the last thing he had ever done of his own volition. It would be easy to be walked in on, easy to frantically drop the knife and pretend to have been very very lost, and easy to not realise you had stumbled onto something that someone very much did not want discovered. Easy to fall down the stairs. 

In the hopes that the vicious murderer of his imagination would walk in on him as well, Lancelot slid to the floor and inspected the chest. It was nothing particularly noticeable, but the make was good and all it took was a quick glance to realise that it would take more than a pocket knife to open it. A large hammer would do, or an axe, if Guinevere would allow him either. 

Sadly, no murderer turned up to kill him, so he tucked the chest under his arm, slid the knife in his pocket, and made his way back to his rooms. Guinevere would find him when she wanted him. 

It was several hours later, but find him she did. In the meantime Lancelot remade his bed twice, went through the first twelve forms of longsword with a broom instead of a blade, and then did pushups until he couldn’t anymore. The temptation to crack open the chest was very strong, but he suspected that Guinevere would be dismayed if he didn’t wait for her. 

She didn’t knock, just pushed the door open and collapsed in the room’s sole chair, raising an eyebrow at the odd stretch into which he had contorted himself. “Well? You wandered off.”

“Had an idea,” Lancelot grunted, unfolding himself. “And it worked out. Before I— is Garoc under guard?”

Guinevere closed her eyes, rolling her head back on the chair. Her voice was tired and faint. “I left Mariole watching him. Defne has been gently encouraged to tell as many people the wonderful news as possible.”

“You’re not worried about Mariole getting hurt if— if the killer comes to finish off Garoc?”

She flopped her head forward again, giving him a long incredulous look. “Lancelot. If Sister Mariole gets horribly killed then at least there will be no immediate political ramifications for me, and we will be one step closer to catching this bastard. Obviously I’d prefer she didn’t, but _someone_ has to be expendable.”

“You sound like Gawain.”

“Well, we taught each other. Anyway, good ne—” But she didn’t finish the sentence. The campanile rang out, sounding three hours after sext. Guinevere flinched as though the sound had physically hit her, and then opened her mouth again to continue. No words came out. For a second Lancelot thought she was laughing, for her shoulders shook fiercely, but then ragged coughs forced their way out of her throat and she doubled over, clutching her abdomen. He stood, prepared to assist in any way he could, but she managed to hold up a hand. Finally her breaths turned from hysterical to wheezing, and she straightened with a painful force of will. “I’m sorry,” she rasped, “I really didn’t want you to see that.”

Lancelot stared at her wordlessly. Memories of the last two days coursed through his mind: how faint she looked slumped against the window, the way she clutched at her head every time the bell rang, and the dead chill of her hand in his. It wasn’t age. Or, if it was age, it was a very final sort.

When she got her breath back she levelled him with a stare that was halfway between apology and rebellious anger. “Come on, Lancelot,” she said, her voice soft despite the harshness of the coughs and her expression, “you didn’t really think if I summoned you to deal with a murderer, the messenger would be able to find you in only a day? I sent for you a week before you came.”

“You mean you didn’t want my help with the murder?” was the first thing Lancelot could think to say, and they stared at each other for a moment before each breaking into quiet laughter. 

“I can solve a murder without you, Lancelot,” said Guinevere tiredly, when the giggles had subsided. She stretched back in her chair. “No, I wanted to see you before I died. That’s what’s happening, you don’t have to sugarcoat it.”

“I know.”

“Well, you don’t have to look so beaten up about it.”

But she knew he was. He knew he was, or would be when the thrill of the chase had faded, and he was alone with only the dismal prospect of sleep. That was how feelings worked for Lancelot: either too much all at once or drawn out like a spool of silk. “Would you like some answers? That’s all I have.”

“Please.”

He reached behind him and slid the chest towards her over the floor. Then he placed the missing knife beside it and gestured at the scratches on the lid. “Found this in the room above the stairs that Dorien fell down. We can probably get it open with a good hammer swing.”

Guinevere stared. Behind her tired eyes wheels spun and gears clicked. Then a small smile lit up her face. “Ladder on the far side of the room. Would you mind—”

“On it.” He jumped up, fetching the ladder from where it rested against the wall in order to reach the attic. Guinevere pulled her chair clear of the danger zone and leaned forward intently. 

“It’s going to be loud,” Lancelot warned. 

“Oh, just do it. I’ll deal with whatever comes of it.”

_One,_ thought Lancelot, _two, three—_ he swung, ramming the edge of the ladder down full force on the small wooden chest and squeezing his eyes shut in case of splinters. When the dust cleared and the echoes stopped ringing in his head, he placed the remains of the ladder down beside him and hurried over to the wreckage, Guinevere not far behind him. 

They stared at the battered contents of the box. 

“Holy _shit_ ,” breathed Guinevere. 


	7. Bread and Sausage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discoveries are made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry school sucked ngl but hey im back now!

“What the hell kind of mushrooms are those?” 

Amidst the shards of the broken box, half-crumbled and carefully dried, sat the clear remnants of little brown mushrooms. They looked innocent and unnoticeable, and Lancelot would have bet all his worldly possessions that they were poisonous. “Ah— don’t know. Don’t know enough about mushrooms.”

Guinevere knelt beside him with a faint groan and peered down. “You live like a feral badger, don’t you? Running around in your little ditches and sleeping in trees? Don’t you eat mushrooms?”

“Don’t know enough about mushrooms to eat mushrooms,” Lancelot said, “and what is it exactly that you think a badger does?”

She ignored the badgers in favour of carefully flipping one mushroom over with a broken piece of box. “So this is how Garoc was poisoned, I presume. And why Dorien was killed— if he found them—”

“—he would have needed to be eliminated,” Lancelot finished. Then he frowned. Something didn’t make sense. “I’m missing something.”

“Hmm?”

They both stared at the mushrooms in silence. Then, at the exact same moment as Lancelot drew in a breath, Guinevere’s eyes widened and she spun to stare at him. “If the mushrooms were there _before_ Dorien found them—”

“Someone had already been poisoned,” said Lancelot, grinning. This was exciting. He felt intrigued and intelligent and alive— and Guinevere was dying. Her face was drawn and ash-grey, as though she were halfway to a corpse already. His momentary good mood curded. It wasn’t fair, he thought, with childish indignation. She didn’t deserve to die. Well, she very much did, but not compared to him. Why was he the last alive of all his friends? First it had been Galehaut, then Tristan and Iseult, then Dinadan, next Elaine, then Gareth and Gawain, and now Guinevere. Somewhere far away, perhaps Palomides and Lynette were still alive. He didn’t know. They certainly didn’t want to talk to him. 

“Lancelot,” said Guinevere quietly, and when he didn’t respond, too caught up in self-pity, she prodded him in the arm with one bony finger. “Lancelot, you— I mean— I don’t want to sound overly optimistic, but I don’t suppose it was _me_ who got poisoned, you don’t think?”

“Oh!” Lancelot blinked. Ran the numbers. Opened his mouth and said “Oh!” again. 

“ _Oh_ is my thought on the matter as well,” Guinevere said. Her voice was as dry as ever, but a hint of desperate hope thrummed under it. “Wouldn’t be the first time. More successful than most, though.”

“Maybe Garoc found out about… I don’t know. This isn’t my wheelhouse anymore.” He paused. “Will it sound terrible if I say you’re the woman?”

“What? You think I’ve poisoned people? Please, I would never be so crass. We’d need to talk to Morgan, but I— really don’t want to.”

“Because…?”

She shot him a look that almost verged on pitiful. “Because then she would find out I was dying.” 

_She might try to stop it_ was the implied problem with the situation. _She might succeed_ was an even more terrifying possibility. Lancelot and Morgan had a long history stemming from the fact that she worshipped the ground (and water) his mother walked on, and when Lancelot veered too close to the precipice that had always seemed more relieving to him than existence, she had been there with a secure dungeon and the kind of oversight only a magician could achieve. They had never bonded particularly— not like he had with Sebile, one of his other regular kidnappers. And as youth had faded, so had the more violent of his impulses. 

Or, at the very least, they had extroverted themselves. 

But this was pointless musing when it came to Guinevere, who had always clung to life with a petulant kind of spite. The trouble with saving a life was that it always cost more than was won. 

(Guinevere would probably be opposed to human sacrifice.)

“Alright,” he said, instead of trying to untangle the Morgan mess, “well, we have to work off of logic, then. Why would you want to poison Garoc?”

Guinevere gave him a bald look, crossing her arms. “He’s irritating.”

“Why would you want to poison Garoc if doing so was too risky to allow for petty motivations?”

“Oh, you make everything difficult. Hm. He’s a cunning little git who tattles on me to Constantine, but you wouldn’t know that unless— unless you were from Camelot. And none of the old guard would turn on me, I can tell you that much.”

He watched her for a moment. Searched her face for pride or hubris. It was Guinevere; only time would tell the one from the other. “You’re sure?”

“What, you’re accusing Cerise or— or Enide?”

“There are others,” Lancelot reflected, pacing over to the window. Outside a pale afternoon stared at him with blank eyes. “The kitchen workers, Joconde, Léline, that Mariole girl, anyone who you forget has known you longer than you think you’ve known them.”

“They wouldn’t,” Guinevere said, “I was good to them. I was good to them all.”

She had been. She had been good to anyone who wasn’t a man; good, sometimes, in a cold way that the men didn’t notice, because kindness was a weakness too. There had been occasional moments of cold calculation, but no one who was deemed a necessary sacrifice was alive now to wreak revenge. Which left newcomers and men. Not bothering to articulate what Guinevere had already worked out, he said, “So who benefits from Garoc dying?”

“No one! No one— no one except me.” Frustrated, she sagged back against the wall, her lips blown out in a pout. “And I would say it’s a frame job, but what’s the point of a frame job if you’re killing the scapegoat as well?”

“Not alive to protest.”

“True. But unless this goes back years— I don’t understand why anyone would want to stop Garoc from reporting on me.”

There was a nasty throbbing pain building behind Lancelot’s left eye. He tried to imagine he wasn’t Lancelot, wasn’t anyone, just a blank slate whose only motivation was to get away with killing Dorien. And— “Simpler explanation!” he said brightly, ignoring the ache of his head. “Anyone who tried to kill Dorien circumspectly but saw Sir Lancelot du Lac show up to investigate would want Garoc dead, because if Garoc is dead, no one is going to tell Constantine. One exiled knight is bad enough, imagine how our dear king would react if he heard about murderous hysterical nuns. It’s hard to continue carrying out your murder plot if even the king knows it’s going on.”

“So they’re both a cover-up for—” Her brain caught up with her words. “For _my_ murder. That’s it. Dorien was killed because he found the poison— must have been sneaking around for Constantine, the little rat. And Garoc was killed to stop Constantine from hearing about it.”

Lancelot nodded, a thrill humming through his veins. The world was coming together. This wasn’t a disparate puzzle he was too stupid to solve, this was a hunt now, and a hunt meant prey. “So you’ve killed two people to cover for yourself, but with each one it gets more obvious a crime has occurred, and now the whole abbey is buzzing about it. And if you’re smart enough to figure Garoc is reporting to Constantine— maybe you overheard something, I don’t know— then you’re smart enough to worry you tipped your hand with using the poison on Garoc as well.”

“And you’re going to be frantically wondering how to cover your tracks now that everyone knows Garoc is alive.” She gave a small, wicked grin. “And Father Giuseppe is here. You can’t kill him without some very important people noticing.”

“So what do you do?”

“Run,” said Guinevere. 

They stared at each other. 

“Kitchens?” said Lancelot. 

“And sleeping quarters.” Her face split into a slow smile. “Ready or not, here we come.”

They split up; Guinevere heading straight to the junior nuns’ sleeping quarters and Lancelot to the kitchens and store rooms. He made it to the courtyard before bumping into Defne hurrying past in the opposite direction, her face dark with worry. “Sir Lancelot!” she exclaimed, letting out a breath. “I need to— Sir Julian, he—”

“Not _sir_ ,” grumbled Lancelot, “he’s no knight.”

She nodded. It was clear that was not her top priority. “He’s left. I tried to get him to stay in his rooms with Father Giuseppe, he— he wouldn’t stay, said he needed to get to the bottom of whatever is going on— I came to tell you and the Prioress.”

 _Shit,_ thought Lancelot. “Where is he off to?”

“I don’t know. I told him to stay put and he pushed me, I’m sorry, I— I should have asked—”

“No, you shouldn’t,” growled Lancelot. He was becoming increasingly aware that this was not a place he was supposed to be in. A place for nuns, he had thought to himself whimsically the day before. And what were nuns? Not women, not all the time, not when giving up your femininity to God could be either a sacrifice or an escape. But they were not men. Men were for visiting: they were family, friends, guests on the road for a night, and then they were supposed to _leave._ But here Julian was, reminding everyone why people chose to be nuns in the first place. The lot of them: Dorien, poking his nose where it didn’t belong; Garoc, tattling on the affairs of the abbey to King Constantine; Father Giuseppe, telling Guinevere how she should carry out her affairs— _Guinevere_ , of all people, who had come to womanhood at the end of a youthful journey full of confusion, and defended it against grasping hands intent on tearing her bare at every turn. But here he was, invited on faith that he was a friend to nuns, and after everything he had lived through he hoped he would be a true one. “We shouldn’t have told you to keep guard over him. He’s a bastard. I want you to go find Mariole with Garoc— stay with her and don’t trust anyone.” 

“What?”

He was ruining Guinevere’s cunning little plan of luring the killer back to Garoc, but it seemed unlikely that would pan out anyway, and Defne looked like a girl who needed a friend. “There’s a killer on the loose,” he said apologetically. “Uhm. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of Julian. Say hi to Mariole for me! Have a good day!”

Lancelot continued on his way. _That was one successful social interaction_ , he thought, ignoring the voice in his head that was telling him he was a very odd person.

He barrelled down the steps into the kitchens, waving awkwardly at a few serving people huddled at the other end of the long room. Their conversation halted as he tumbled into the room. “Has anyone come in to take food?”

They stared at him in suspicious confusion. The page Lucien blinked, slightly quicker on the uptake than the rest of the group. “Thaïs came in maybe an hour ago. But Thaïs always comes in for food.”

Well, it wasn’t Thaïs, of that much Lancelot was certain. She was foolhardy and stupid and at the same time too intelligent for her own good, but she wasn’t a killer. “No one else?”

They all glanced at each other. “No?” said a short brown-haired woman. “Just Thaïs and her raid on our bread and sausage supply.”

Nothing in the kitchen looked out of place. He sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck and trying to think. It had been too much to hope that they would find the killer that easily. It would have been very nice to have someone unusual coming in to stock up on non-perishable goods, but— he stopped. Frowned. “Bread and sausage?”

“That’s normal,” Lucien piped up defensively. “Her and Aicha come in all the time for food and to talk. Uh— don’t tell the Prioress.”

“Her and Aicha,” repeated Lancelot. Something was worming around in his brain, a tail end of a thought that he couldn’t quite formulate. He tried to fit it through a mental needle-head but couldn’t quite. “But it was just her today?”

The group nodded. He could tell they were getting nervous. 

“And did she spend time talking?”

Lucien didn’t say anything, his face shuttered into fear he had dug his friend into a hole. Instead the woman said, “No, she had to get somewhere. She was in a hurry.”

“Right,” said Lancelot, already backing up the stairs, “thank you.”

Bread and sausage, Thaïs on her own, in a hurry. It was the sort of food you packed for a quick getaway. Lancelot didn’t think Thaïs was capable of hurting a fly, much less kill a man, and he also didn’t think she could keep it secret if she knew who did. But for all her spiteful vim and vigour she was young. She would be easily manipulatable if you were cold and calculating— if you were a Guinevere type of person. 

The string slipped through the head of the needle. It hadn’t been Thaïs’ idea to spy on him that morning. It hadn’t been Mariole’s idea to bring tea to Garoc. And he would bet the sword he had thrown out the window an hour ago that it hadn’t been Thaïs’ idea to grab bread and sausage from the kitchens in a hurry. No, that had all been Aicha. 

He broke into a run, dashing through the courtyard and up the western stairs to the location Léline had delineated as the nuns’ sleeping quarters. Normally he wouldn’t be worried much about Guinevere’s ability to hold her own, but she was frail and half-poisoned, and Aicha was young and wiry. He cratered around corners and down hallways, trying to find his way to the wing for the younger nuns. Unsuccessful, he nonetheless found Guinevere, stalking methodically down a corridor with a gaggle of nervous nuns following her. She turned when he barged into the hallway, a questioning expression on her face. 

“Have answers, maybe,” he said, and then gestured at the assembled crowd. 

Guinevere’s eyes narrowed. “Go in your rooms, everyone,” she said. “Sir Lancelot and I will sort this out. Don’t be afraid.”

They acquiesced, quickly and silently. Lancelot waited until all the doors were shut before grabbing her wrist and dragging her out onto the landing in front of the hall, slamming the main door shut behind him. “We need to find Aicha,” he said. “Where do the junior nuns live?”

“Aicha? No, she— no.” Guinevere reclaimed her wrist, her brow furrowed. “But… upstairs. I thought the more senior nuns were more likely. Let’s check upstairs. There’s only one stairwell.”

They wasted no time in rushing up the stairwell, Lancelot half-supporting Guinevere on his arm. She had to pause at the top to catch her breath, but then she looked up and blanched even further. “The door to the hall is open. It’s almost nones. No one should be in there.”

“I have a horrible sneaking suspicion I know who has inserted himself into the situation,” hissed Lancelot, and flung the doors further open. “Julian, what the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

Julian started. He didn’t seem to have been doing anything in particular, just inspecting a polished table in the middle of the hall, but when he caught sight of Lancelot his shoulders braced and he lifted his chin up. “It’s obvious there’s something sinister going on in this abbey,” he said, “and it’s my job to find out what. I’m supposed to write everything down for the Archbishop. It’s all perfectly within my rights as a notary to Father Giuseppe, I think you’ll find, Sir Lancelot. And it’s very suspicious of you to want to detain me.”

His eyes didn’t flick to register Guinevere’s presence, not even when she entered behind Lancelot and swung the doors closed. They closed with a faint _click_ , and Lancelot felt something twist under the skin of his hands. But he wouldn’t do anything, no, not here, not in Guinevere’s kingdom. Not unless it was called for. “And what have you found?” he said softly. 

“A dead body and a man who will soon be dead, no matter what you say. That’s suspicious enough.”

Guinevere cleared her throat. “Nothing, then. You took the opportunity to inspect upstairs while there was a commotion going on downstairs, and you found nothing.”

“I’ve only been here for a minute,” said Julian plaintively, and Lancelot almost laughed at the indignant expression on his callous young face. 

“Right,” said Guinevere, striding past him without sparing him a glance and pulling out a thin ring of keys from a pocket of her habit. She stopped in front of a door Lancelot assumed was Aicha’s. “Just stay where you are and look pretty, then, please.”

The door opened. There was silence, for a moment. Then a small voice from within said, “Hello, Mother Prioress, I— I promise this isn’t what it looks like.”

“I had hoped you wouldn’t be here,” said Guinevere. Her face looked more sad than surprised. “Lancelot said you would. It is what it looks like, Aicha, I know that.”

“I— we— we just need to leave.”

Lancelot padded forward, ignoring Julian and coming to peer over Guinevere’s shoulder. Surrounded by half-packed bags, Aicha sat frozen in the middle of the floor, her eyes wide and childish. She didn’t look like the killer she must be. She looked scared and guilty.

Exhaling a deep breath, Guinevere said, “You won’t be leaving anywhere. We’ll be dealing with you.”

“I’m— I’m so sorry, I swear I don’t want to leave, we—”

“Why do you want me dead, then?” said Guinevere, her voice quiet and almost clinical. 

Aicha dropped the wineskin she had been holding. “What?”

“Why have you been poisoning me?”

For a moment Aicha’s mouth moved up and down without making a noise. Then she said, “I— I would never— you think— oh _God._ Thaïs and I are running because we didn’t want to be here if— if there was new oversight— not because we killed anyone. Please, you have to believe me.”

Faintly, so faintly he was certain no one else would have registered it, Lancelot heard the boards on the landing outside the door creak. Aicha wasn’t Guinevere, he realised. She was just a scared girl, something Guinevere might have been in a different world. But not a manipulator, not someone who had lived through Camelot, not someone who knew how to play the game. That someone was outside, listening to their conversation. Not fully understanding why he was doing it, acting solely on instinct, he slammed his hand against the doorframe and said, “Well, you’ll be hanging for it no matter what you say.” He paused. Let the words swirl around like water poured into wine. Added, “Because you are killing my best friend.”

The door opened behind them and he spun around. “No, she isn’t,” said Léline, her hand wrapped around the hilt of a knife she did not know how to hold, “but I am.”


	8. Endgame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Matters are resolved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the added archive warning for graphic violence!

Every muscle in Lancelot’s body tensed. She was Léline; she was a nun, and not in the prime of youth either, he could take her in an instant— immobilize her without even having to hurt her. And she was killing his best friend. Had killed a person already, and probably a second. His eyes trailed off the knife in her hand and onto her face. Her jaw was shaking, ever so slightly. 

“Sister Léline,” said Guinevere, her voice even. She sounded as though they had met cordially on the grounds. “I’m glad you could join us.”

Léline had eyes only for Lancelot. “Let Aicha go,” she said. “It wasn’t her. She didn’t do anything except listen.”

“To you? And what did you tell her?”

The world came together before she even spoke: suddenly Lancelot recalled that it had been Léline who had inspired Thaïs to go spying, Léline who had drawn Aicha away from her duties with Garoc, and first and foremost Léline who had watched his every move from the second he had arrived, watched him like a hawk. Léline who had known from as soon as she had seen him that he had been a knight, despite his unprepossessing attire. And she had come from Camelot. 

“Nothing that mattered,” said Léline, turning to face Guinevere. “She’s innocent. She and Thaïs both. Let her go.”

Lancelot glanced between her and Guinevere, who was standing with her arms on her hips like a disapproving nursemaid. But when she opened her mouth her voice was quiet and there was none of the venom in it that Lancelot expected. “You, then. I’ll ask you what I asked Aicha. Why do you want me dead?”

For a moment Lancelot thought Léline wouldn’t answer, so clenched was her jaw. But then, as though the one word took every ounce of her willpower, she said: “ _Camelot_.”

Guinevere blinked. “I— Léline, I— we didn’t speak much, but I only ever looked out for you, didn’t I?”

“Right,” said Léline, and inched a step closer towards her, the knife-tip wavering in the air. “You looked out for me. That was very politic of you, and I suppose you were altruistic in your own little sense. Always looking out for the women, right?”

“I—”

“ _Sometimes the women love men_ ,” spat Léline. Her eyes were wide and the room silent as she spoke. “And you didn’t care about them, did you? High and mighty on your throne, pulling all the strings, playing the game, playing— _him_.” She spun to face Lancelot.

“Me?” he said, bewildered. Now everyone was staring at him and he didn’t like it. It seemed eminently likely he had done _something_ that deserved revenge, just on statistics, but he was unsure which incident was relevant to the current situation. 

“Him?” Guinevere echoed, but he could hear dawning dread in her voice. “Try to take it out on him, then, if you must, but leave me out of—”

Léline rounded on her, knife pointing out to the side straight at Lancelot. “Sir Lancelot killed my lover, _Your Majesty.”_

Silence rang out like a muffled bell-toll. “Oh,” said Lancelot faintly, and if his heart hadn’t broken some time before it would have broken then. “Well, I killed mine too, so I understand the feeling.”

Guinevere took one cautious step back away from Léline. Despite everything, despite the fact that all Léline had was a knife she didn’t know how to use, and what Guinevere had was a Lancelot she did know how to use, something in her eyes looked scared. “Why are you killing me for what Lancelot did?”

“When did you _ever_ stop him? When did you ever care about— about anyone who wasn’t— you or him or Sir Gawain—”

In a flash, Lancelot remembered what Guinevere had said to him under the tree on the grounds. _I wouldn’t have cared how many of Arthur’s knights you killed if you had only managed to leave the brothers alone._ Selective morality, a practical kind; rather, it was practicality dressed up as morality. Do what you want but not to _our_ people. Hurt who you want, kill who you want, but not us. Never us. That was the transgression— not the killing itself but the betrayal. Lancelot felt sick. You spent your life with blinders on and when you took them off everything was behind you and long beyond change. 

And Guinevere was standing, her eyes tired and sad, and she had no heed for the knife now. “So, what? Kill me because you couldn’t get to him?”

Léline shook her head. “I hate you just as much, Queen Guinevere. Just because you never got your hands dirty— the whole thing was rotten, the whole court, and you were sitting at the top. And when it all came crashing down— my husband defended you, you know. The king made him stand guard when you were imprisoned, and Hadrian took off his armour and arms like Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris, because he thought you were _innocent_. Sir Lancelot slaughtered him with the rest, and no one cared. No one mourned, no, not for a nobody who came to court before he even knew his name. Not for Sir Hadrian. I did, though. And here you are…” She gave a wild gesture around the room. “...trying to make your own little Camelot again. Just the same as ever. Not a single one of your friends remembered I had been married and asked what had happened to him. Not Enide, not Cerise, not Joconde— no one. So you all die.”

An intake of breath. “How?” said Guinevere. 

“That’s all you care about, not even an apo—”

“I’m sorry,” said Guinevere plainly, and Lancelot felt his mouth open slightly in shock. He could not remember ever hearing Guinevere apologize before— not even when she was in tears with guilt. It was, to her, the ultimate surrender. “You’re right. I only ever worried about surviving, Léline. There’s nothing I can— I don’t know what to say. I was very cruel. Maybe I didn’t have to be. Maybe I did. There’s no knowing now, is there? So all I can say is I’m sorry and ask you how you’re killing my— my friends.”

“I—” Léline was as white as a sheet, her nostrils flared. Then, very quietly, she said, “The incense. For the matins service. I sneak into the storeroom and add mushrooms, poisonous ones. Doesn’t reach the back of the hall much, just the senior nuns like you and— the rest. I suppose there’s no point in hiding it now, even if only you seem to be getting sick.”

“And Garoc?”

“Oh, I gave him a poisoned pie,” said Léline, and for a moment her face twitched with a glimpse of humour. “That one was easy. That man Dorien, I— that was a mistake—”

“You caught him snooping around in the storage room for Constantine and pushed him down the stairs in case he found your mushrooms,” said Lancelot wearily. “He hadn’t gotten the box open, you know. If you’d just chased him off you would have gotten away with the whole thing.”

A glance up at Guinevere saw her looking more dead than alive. “Might have been for the best if you had.”

Léline trembled, and then her shoulders sagged. All of the fight abandoned her in the face of unexpected vindication, and she cast a desperate glance at Aicha. “I— I had to give myself up when I saw you were after Aicha. I was trying to— look, I thought if she and Thaïs escaped looking guilty they would be fine. Safe. Away from here.”

At that, Aicha stirred from her position frozen on the floor. “You framed me?” she said, her voice low.

“I didn’t— I never wanted you to get hurt. You have to believe me.” Léline shook her head violently and cast a desperate glance at her audience. “It was just— to get Sir Lancelot off my back. I wanted you and Thaïs to poke around, look suspicious, and then escape. A clean break. And take all the suspicion with you.”

“Oh, Léline,” said Guinevere sadly, into the hollow silence, “it’s very easy to play the game, isn’t it? You do it without even realising.”

In the chaos and tension, Lancelot had forgotten about Julian. Now, as Léline moved her mouth wordlessly and Guinevere didn’t seem to even have the energy for anger over her own murder, he coughed. “Well, this is all very touching,” he sneered, “but either Sir Lancelot should kill her now or we should lock her up and hang her.”

Aicha blanched; Léline stared straight ahead of her, her gaze vacant. Guinevere and Lancelot exchanged one look. It said: _too little too late is better than nothing at all._ Her face was long and her eyes sad. She had won, in a sense, if by winning you meant dying with answers. Briefly Lancelot wondered if the other nuns who had been breathing the incense were as affected as she was. They didn’t seem to be— perhaps not enough of it reached them. It was all a stupid, imperfect affair, the final clawing desperation of a woman in pain who wanted to hurt as she had been hurt. No one she had poisoned had even died yet. But if pain in her husband’s killers was what she had wanted then that, at the very least, had succeeded. 

And he realised: Guinevere wasn’t going to say anything. Guinevere wouldn’t say anything because she, unlike Lancelot, had already made the ultimate sacrifice. She had said she was sorry. Which meant it was his turn to play. “We aren’t going to be doing either of those things,” he told Julian, his voice soft. “We’re going to be escorting her from the premises and sending her far away from here. Understood?”

He saw Guinevere give him a small smile in tacit approval. It felt like stepping on nails, to pretend at goodness and mercy when he knew he was neither good nor merciful, and everyone in the room knew it too. But Léline could be hurt no further. 

“That’s nonsense.” Julian swivelled between him and Guinevere, his face scornful. “You— Sir Lancelot— you can take whatever this farce is and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. This woman is a murderess and she should hang for her crimes.” He gave Lancelot a sneer and dusted off his hands as though to wipe the scene off his hands before leaving. “If you insist on _fake weakness_ in your old age, then I’ll deal with it.” 

“Lancelot,” said Guinevere, her voice clipped. 

He was already moving. Julian barely got a step towards the door before Lancelot was on him, grabbing him by the collar of his surcoat and hauling him back. He might have the frame of a skilled fighter, but he had nothing beyond brute strength, and certainly no reflexes. Before he could think to react, Lancelot shifted his grip to either side of his head and, ignoring Aicha’s horrified face in the corner of his eye, slammed Julian’s skull down onto the table at full force. 

There was a delicious crack that he felt thrum through the muscles of his forearms more than heard. Then he yanked Julian’s stunned form up and propelled his forehead back down once more onto the hard wood. This time he felt more bone give way and blood spurted out from under his hands, soaking his fingers and the table, glinting red in the low light. Finally, as Julian slumped forward, Lancelot grasped him by the chin and jerked his head to the side until his neck snapped. Another crack. He stepped back, every muscle in his body alive and humming and satisfied in a way he hadn’t felt for months. But there was no one else to fight. 

“Uh, right,” said Guinevere after a moment. The two other nuns were staring, their faces contorted in horror. Aicha looked as though she was about to be sick. “So, we’re going to have to find a way to explain this to the Bishop.”

“Ah.” Well, it had been called for. Desperate times called for desperate measures. But everyone was looking at him, and two of them were looking terrified. “Yes. Uhm. Sorry to, uh— I’m sorry about that.” Years of practice kicking into gear, Guinevere nodded at the door. “Sister Léline, please close that door and lock it.” Then, when she obeyed mutely: “I suppose you’ve got all the revenge out of your system?”

“I—”

“Léline,” Lancelot cut in, as patiently as he could, “you either help us cover up the murders you committed against us, or you die. Those are your only options.”

She stood frozen, her face caught between fear and spite. For a horrible moment Lancelot wondered if he _would_ have to kill her, in the end, or at least watch her die. It seemed a pity. She wasn’t a brigand on the road. She wasn’t Julian. Then Aicha said, very quietly, “Léline, I— I can’t let them hang you. Please. You were my friend.”

The past tense and the sad note of her voice hit their mark. Léline swallowed and gave Guinevere a curt nod. “Fine. What do you want? A cure, is that it? There is no cure. Not after as much smoke as you’ve breathed in.”

“I don’t care about a cure, you pathetic excuse for an assassin,” said Guinevere, rolling her eyes. Suddenly, stupidly, Lancelot wanted to laugh. “I don’t want one of my nuns to be hanged for murder. You can think it’s all about my reputation if you like, I don’t care, but you are going to leave my abbey alive and unsuspected, and you are going to live your happy little life far away from here. Go to France or Constantinople and find a new husband with a taste for victimhood and poison. Be as happy as you can. I can’t be bothered to wish you ill.”

Léline gaped. Anger passed over her face, then fear, and then defeat. “That’s— alright. As long as you aren’t framing Aicha or Thaïs or any of the young nuns. Don’t drag them into this. Please.”

Now Guinevere laughed, freely and genuinely. She clapped her hands and gave Lancelot a delighted look. “Framing the nuns? Please. No, no, we’re going to frame Sir Lancelot.”

Lancelot blinked. “We are?” he said, more curious than concerned. 

“With your cooperation, of course,” Guinevere added, with a flick of her eyes that was all she gave to indicate she was being honest about that, and would find another route if he wanted her to. “I just figure what with everything, you know, a few more on top wouldn’t make much of a difference.”

He thought about this. Aside from the issue of Dorien, which Guinevere could surely sort with some good old-fashioned lying, there was an obvious issue. “But— _you_.”

“Me,” said Guinevere sourly. Her mouth twitched. “Léline, how long do I have?”

“The— the thirst hasn’t started yet, has it?”

Guinevere’s face was as impassive as ever, and Lancelot loved her for it and wanted to cry at the same time. “Oh, good Lord. No. I think I would know.”

“Months, then.”

“So that works,” said Lancelot quietly. “The cruel Sir Lancelot was invited to stay but went on a rampage and murdered King Constantine’s men. It’s not a hard story to believe, I suppose. Oh, and the Bishop’s men as well.” He paused. “Yes, this is very plausible. Should I stab Garoc to complete the set?”

“He’ll be dead by now,” said Léline. “Different poison, there. I— I had to, he would have reported to— ”

“So a stab would be good, then.” Lancelot waved a hand to apologize for the interruption. He worried he was looking a bit stab-happy. “Just to make it look like— like a real Lancelot incident. Mhm.”

“Haha,” said Léline.

“Brilliant,” said Guinevere. 

“I think I’d like to leave now,” said Aicha. 

In the end, they locked Léline in her room while the final affairs were carried out. Lancelot tried not to think too hard, tried to collect his things and go about his business and let none of it get to his head. It didn’t work. He was being as good as he could be and it felt worse than cruelty ever had. Garoc was dead by the time he arrived, which at least made matters slightly less unsavoury, but all he could think was that an old man had died in pain. If you let go of the fighting and the chivalry and the politics, forgot the gilded words and justifications for killing, then no one deserved to die in pain. Even if they weren’t your friend. It was, he thought distastefully, a lesson all the sadder for being learned far too late. 

When he returned to his little room near the attic— how long ago it seemed that Léline had shown him to it!— the sword was waiting for him, and Guinevere was too. The one winked at him from beside his pack as though it had every right to be standing there, as though it didn’t give him permission to do everything he wanted to do but wouldn’t have otherwise. And Guinevere, too, with her dark hair tightly bound under her wimple and her eyes sad and the hands she had never used for killing, not her own hands, never her own. She greeted him with a little nod. “You won’t be coming back, then.”

Not if everything went as planned, with both Constantine and the Bishop after him. He shook his head. Words seemed distant. 

“Father Giuseppe will be so— so _smug_ ,” she said, turning towards the window. “But that’s no matter.”

“Why arrange all this?” 

She shrugged, her narrow shoulders silhouetted by the pale light from outside. “I told Léline it was good for my reputation. No one wants to run an abbey where the nuns up and kill you.”

He wasn’t Léline. Sighing, he stepped forward and came to her side, staring out at the bland, grey-green scenery below. All it would take to hold her would be a hand around her waist: pull her to him, rest his chin on the crown of her head, grip her hand and tell her he loved her, after everything. He didn’t. “Well, I’m asking you if— if that’s why.”

Below them, a junior nun wandered out onto the small gravel path, following what appeared to be a chicken with rapt attention. “If I’m going to die in a month or so,” said Guinevere, “I have no need for reputation. No. My reason— it’s stupid.”

“Mm?”

“You’ll make fun of me.”

“I won’t.”

“Well,” she said, and for a second her fingers brushed his as though she would take his hand. “I’m the Mother Prioress. I’m supposed to look after them. And I’ll keep looking after them even if they hate me.”

Lancelot nodded, once, and watched a bird loop against the mottled off-white sky. 

“Chin up,” she said, “we did what we had to in order to survive.”

“You believe that?”

Guinevere breathed out, laughter tinging her voice. “I don’t know. Maybe we did more than we needed to. Maybe surviving shouldn’t have been the goal in the first place. Don’t ask me philosophical questions, Lancelot, you know they give me stomach trouble.”

“Fine, fine.” He turned away from the window and reached for his pack, hauling it over one shoulder. The sword leered at him, its ruby hilt glinting lowly. He took it. It fitted perfectly in his hand, even though he had not held it willingly in quite some time. Taking a step away from Guinevere, he let it swing a couple times, admired the weight, the way light seemed to ripple off it. A few treacherous hints of hope began to circle in his brain, tantalizing and impossible to pinpoint. He swung the sword again. Imagined the feel of it cutting into mail and flesh. “Guinevere,” he said slowly, “I think you should say goodbye to Morgan if you’re well and truly dying.”

“I— I can’t. She loves me too much.”

“She’s a very talented healer,” Lancelot observed, giving the sword a flourish. 

“I have nothing to trade. You know how magic is.”

“Hm.” Point. Parry. Thrust. “What about the sword that killed Sir Gawain?”

From the look on her face it was clear she was not sure if this was a gift she wanted or not. “I— I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“Whether I— deserve it. To live.”

Time, Lancelot reflected, went only in one direction. There were things in the past, which you couldn’t revisit, and things in the future, which was where you were going. You could walk forward or stop where you were and sit down. If you sat, you wouldn’t mug innocent travellers on the road ahead of you, certainly, but you wouldn’t pick them up when they stumbled either. And if the road behind you was so very grim, you kept walking, kept walking always, because there were people just over the next hill you could decide to be better to than the ones you had left behind. “I don’t know about deserve,” he said, “but the more time you have left, the more of it there is to find a way of deserving it. You know?”

She gave him a smile, one of those tiny sly little ones she had used to give him when he’d said something that no one else at court would think him intelligent enough to say. “That’s very poetic of you.”

“I walk in the forest by myself a lot.” “It shows. That’s what you’re off to do now, I suppose.”

He would have to leave soon, very soon. “Yes. This is— goodbye, I think. The last one. I can’t come back.”

“Leave the sword here. It should stick around for a few hours. I’ll—” She grimaced and shut her eyes for a second as though the words were hard to say. “I’ll do Morgan’s stupid summoning ritual and— talk to her, at least. I’ll talk to her. Say goodbye or make a deal.”

Lancelot breathed out. “Good.” “And you, Lancelot, well… if I’m alive…” She stepped up to him, her gaze wide and earnest, and reached up one cold hand to cup his cheek like the lovers they had never been. “Whenever I think of you I’ll send an assassin after you. To show I care.”

Involuntarily, his face split in a grin. It wasn’t a promise to live. But it was a thought rooted in the concept of a future. “Thank you. That’s very sweet. Guinevere, I—”

“Don’t say it. You love me, yes? I can’t hear it, Lancelot, or I really shall cry, and that would be too much.”

He set the sword carefully on the windowsill and readjusted the bag strap on his shoulder. “I don’t think I need to say that for you to know it’s true. No, I… I’m glad I met you. I’m glad we were friends.”

Paralleling his steps towards the door, she backed up towards the window. The light crested the top of her head like a halo, and for a moment she was a saint. “For better and for worse?”

“If I think selfishly,” he said, “you were only ever the best.”

He fetched a sullen Léline, with a promise to part ways from her at the nearest port. He didn’t bid anyone else goodbye. He left. 

Behind him, the sun set. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read this, I can't thank you enough. This was a wild ride for me and certainly a project that I didn't believe myself capable of completing, much less completing in a way I was happy with. I have learned so much from writing this and I hope it brought you joy, or if it didn't I hope you got something out of it nonetheless. Thank you.


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